Chapter C (100) - Gate
“You impressed Ignis,” Roba said, looking over his most recent results. “He’s raised you to rank 599. That’s a substantial increase for only a couple months of practice.”
Kizu half expected her to berate him for somehow cheating, but she seemed pleased by the rank movement. So pleased, in fact, that she immediately launched into details about how to properly perform the gate spell.
“So, boy,” she said, after finishing her lecture. “Are you ready to attempt a gate?”
Before Kizu could even respond in the affirmative, Roba jumped them to their usual training ground.
“For now, you should only attempt a short-range gate. Aim for it to be about the size of your thumb. The glyphs you enchant will magnify the result. Your goal today is to keep the portal open for a solid minute.”
Kizu channeled his magic in the way Roba had taught him. It was similar to jumping, but more external. Instead of picturing himself, he solidified the image of the port and destination in his mind. He channeled into that image, creating a bridge to link the locations.
It was only the size of a yennie, but a rift opened in front of him. A glance to the side showed him a mirror rift a couple meters away. Almost exactly where he’d aimed it. He continued to channel into it
Roba picked up a stick and approached the rift over to the side of him. She thrust the stick through. It suddenly appeared right in front of Kizu, jabbing him between the eyes. His concentration dropped as his hand reflexively reached up to massage the point of impact.
The gate winked out of existence. The stick snapped in half and the ground at his feet.
“Why did you stop channeling?” Roba asked, waving her half of the stick in the air like a wand.
Kizu glared at her. At that moment, she looked and sounded exactly like the crone.
He knew better than to complain. Instead, he set up another gate. This time, a pebble fell on his head from above. He gave Roba a side-eye, while maintaining the gate. He suspected she had transported the pebble throughout an external jump. Theoretically, he read it was possible to force an outside force to move while not jumping oneself. But it was a tricky maneuver as the mage was only directly involved through the start of the spell. It gave a lot more room for error. But it wasn’t surprising Roba would have mastered that. Especially in such a short distance jump.
Six more times, pebbles and sticks prodded at him. The only time his concentration wavered a bit was when the ground below him swelled with elemental magic. But he regained his focus before fully allowing the distraction to break the spell.
“Good.” Roba waved a hand, dispelling his portal with antimagic. “Maintaining that spell is vital. You have a decent foundation to build on. It could still be better, admittedly, but so long as you’re expecting an interruption, you do passably well.”
She then launched into an explanation of how to properly combine his enchanting with his spatial magic. He knew the basics from Professor Kateshi’s lectures that involved linking enchantments to elemental and illusion spells, but he found Roba’s explanation more thorough and exact.
“You must enchant each of the glyphs two at a time, matching them with its partner on the other side of your portal. Ten to twenty matching pairs should suffice, so long as your glyph work is passable. However, time is vital in this process. Give yourself at least two days between each pair of enchantments to recuperate your blood. Though I’d recommend closer to four or five if you’re also casting spells outside of these enchantments.”
That wouldn’t be necessary with Anata’s help, but Kizu nodded along, listening intently to her instructions. By the end of his private lesson with Roba, he was giddy as he quickly went to Professor Kateshi’s classroom to obtain the materials Finn had already reinforced.
Finn had layered strengthening enchantments on the physical qualities of their portal. Enchantments to keep it from buckling under strain and from being scraped or water damaged. With that completed, Kizu was free to start working on glyphs for the actual utility of the portal.
Their cache of materials was piled in the back of the classroom. Since they were designing their portal to function as two connected bookshelves, it lay in scattered pieces, waiting to be assembled.
There were a few other unfinished student projects nearby as well. Kizu spotted what looked like clay body parts of a doll in one pile and what looked like a small pile of metal piercings in another.
“Kaga Kizu?” Kateshi asked, sounding surprised as she entered her classroom and spotted him in the back. She looked completely exhausted, with large dark bags under her eyes.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Professor Kateshi. Sorry, I hope you don’t mind,” Kizu said as he lifted up a board of their portal bookshelf. “I just finished a tutoring session with Roba and wanted to get started on my project as soon as possible before anything slipped out of memory.”
“That’s fine. I was simply surprised to see a student here. How is your leg brace holding up?”
“It’s been working well.” He thought about mentioning the strain he’d put it under during the school excursion to Tross but thought better of it. He was doing fine now.
“Hm, good. I’ve been meaning to speak to you. Last week I met with some of the royal medics in Hon and your leg came up in our conversation. One of them thought she might be able to mend your leg with a new technique she’s developed. It’s experimental, but perhaps worth pursuing if it's something still bothering you.”
“Really?” Kizu’s heart raced. He had almost written off the idea of having a permanent fix to his leg. He had been looking at temporary solutions like enhancement spells.
“It would involve breaking your leg apart again and realigning it to properly heal.”
“But you told me before that my leg was broken too extensively to do that. What’s different about this technique?”
“Yes, you are correct. Similar surgeries have been done to lesser degrees before, but your leg is an altogether more complex issue. However, my associate was intrigued by the challenge that your particular case posed. Your leg would need to be cut open to the bone and then shattered in exactly the right spots. Then the excess bone growth from the malunion needs to be shaved away in correct ratios. There are over three dozen locations that would need to be rebroken and reassembled. She told me it would be a step-by-step process where she breaks and heals the bone before peeling back the skin, fat, and muscle of the next break. And she would use an advanced divining technique to use your healthy leg as an example to find the correct ratios to keep the mangled leg from healing lopsided. The bone growth makes it an extraordinarily intensive task. If you choose to go through with the surgery, you’ll have Shinzou Academy’s financial support.”
“That would be amazing! When can I start?” It actually sounded extremely grisly, but Kizu didn’t care in the slightest. It reminded him of some of the Crone’s old punishments.
“I’ll contact her and let her know you’re interested. Don’t expect anything before the end of the semester though.”
After dropping that news on him, she began to gather up the books she apparently had come here for. It looked bizarre as she stuffed the massive tomes into a spatially enchanted handbag. Kizu caught a glimpse of the spines and noted that they looked like astronomy books. He had expected the topics to be on medicine or enchanting, but he supposed the professors likely each had interests outside their fields.
“I have an alarm enchanted to let me know if you tinker with another group’s work,” Kateshi warned as she exited through the classroom’s painting. “Keep that in mind and stick to your own project while you’re here.”
Kizu had no intention of touching anything other than his own work. And he doubted anyone in this class would want to sabotage his project. Well, other than Finn. But since Finn was stuck working alongside him, that was a nonissue. Probably.
His lack of blood proved to be a problem. By the time he finished connecting two pairs of seals, he was already feeling woozy. In the end, he gathered up a pile of boards and made his way down to Owl’s Respite to seek out Anata’s help. The goal of the project had been to connect the two places with a gate to begin with, so if he assembled one end of the portal there, it would help test the capabilities before he submitted it as the enchanting final.
When he arrived, panting and exhausted after dragging along more of the project than he rationally should have, he found Anata sitting in front of his scrying orb reading a book. He glanced over her shoulder at the book’s title at the header of the page. The Reckless Wolf - Book 6 of Bean the Fox. Kizu had never heard of the series, but Anata obviously must like it a lot to already be on the sixth book. She’d been reading a lot recently. While he still gave her reading and writing lessons daily, she mostly had moved on to mostly personal reading. She used his scrying orb in the last few weeks more than he ever had. Personally, he felt reading from the thing was a pretty tedious endeavor as it flashed words over its surface. It had information, but he couldn’t do things like sketch out divination rituals or bookmark specific pages.
Rather than interrupt Anata, Kizu went over to Sojan, who was in his usual spot at the ship’s bow, fishing rod in hand. His arms had been reattached as if nothing had ever happened. Kizu stepped over the piles of blood-drained fish strewn across the deck.
“I have a question about something,” he said. It had been nagging at him for a few days now, ever since his talk with Basil.
Sojan rolled his neck, looking back at him without repositioning his body.
“Is it about stabbing? You could definitely improve your technique.”
“I got you a body, didn’t I? Stop complaining. It’s something else.”
Sojan stretched his gnome body and turned around. He smiled, giving Kizu his full attention.
“You mentioned before that you liked this new body because there wasn’t a soul to contest with.”
“Very true! Extremely convenient. Efficient.”
“Does that mean you wrestle control from a person’s soul to puppet the body?”
“Yes. But it’s rarely an issue. Just means I need to drink more blood. Only times it’s really difficult is with a soul like that Blood Lord you stabbed.”
“When Basil inserted you into my back, did you notice anything about my soul?”
“You mean the lesion? Obviously I noticed that.”
“Lesion?”
“Like someone scooped out a piece. Left an easily exploitable divot. Not as easy as this glorious body, but still nice.” Sojan waved his arms to gesture at his current body. Kizu had to duck to avoid a fishing hook in the ear as the rod swung in Sojan’s grip.
“From my bond to Mort?”
“No, no. Completely different. That was long healed up and solidified. This was new. But I don’t know much about souls beyond bypassing them. You should try asking your necromancer pal about it.”
Kizu really didn’t want to bring up the fact he might have another entity wedged into his soul to Aoi. It was less intrusive than she would be upon finding out about his situation. So far, the entity had only helped him. But it had heard his discussion with Basil and taken control, which implied that it listened in on his conversations. There was no promise it wouldn’t turn on him if it realized he wanted it removed. And Aoi was thorough in her questioning whenever it involved anything soul related.
With no plain answers obtained, Kizu went back to glyph work for the portal. At the very least, that was something he could actually work on with a clear path forward.