Chapter 9

Transfer Students

Six weeks had gone by since I put Kathrine to sleep and there was almost no change to her soul injures. The damage I’d done was too extensive. She wasn’t getting better on her own. She needed Davina or Father to help her. The knowledge in my head told me they were her best hope. Contessa’s library was unsurprisingly light on that sort of information that would help Kathrine and the adventurer guild’s library only brushed the surface, so I didn’t know what else I could do. Dalin didn’t know either.

Riza had stopped by several times to check on Kathrine, loudly stating that several people knew where she was when she arrived. She offered to take Kathrine to the church to help speed up her recovery, but I wasn’t willing to let her do that. The cleric’s there might not know what they were doing and that could make her worse.

All I could do was wait.

Dalin noticed me as I walked into the infirmary, scowling at everything around me. A handful of beds were occupied today, so the staff were more active than usual. The patients were my fault. Learning Kathrine still wasn’t recovering had left me in a foul mood and for the past several days I hadn’t bothered to restrain myself when I returned the curses to their creators.

I nodded to the box I was carrying. “I’ve got another batch of cursed items for you.”

Dalin returned my scowl with his own. “Can’t you see, I’m dealing with your latest cursed student? His genitals are shrinking as we speak.”

The terrified young man began hyperventilating. “They’re still shrinking!”

I chuckled.

“Don’t you dare laugh! I don’t know what you did to empower this curse, but I’m not entirely sure I can remove it.”

“You can’t remove it! No. No. No. This can’t be happening.” He began rocking back and forth.

I continued to chuckle, amused by his suffering. He’d gone so far across the line that it was socially acceptable for me to revel in his misery. Even some of the staff were smirking and they were members of the church.

I drew Dalin’s attention back to the reason I was here. “I’ve got six items that need their curses lifted, so I can safely return my students property to them. And I need to make sure everyone came in to be cleansed.” I held out the list of students to him.

Dalin waved over one of his assistants who took the list and went to check it against the logbook.

As the assistant walked away, magic filled the academy and then headmaster Wink’s voice boomed through every building. “Would senior staff and the duelling club please make their way to the main auditorium.”

Dalin sighed. “That’s us.”

He levitated off the ground and started flying to the door. Unlike a lot of clerics, Dalin had studied the other branches of magic he had access to and was quite proficient. I ran behind him, following him out of the infirmary.

“What about my penis!”

Neither of us stopped.

Dalin turned down several hallways and then flew out a window. I leapt after him casting a basic levitate spell that slowed my descend before I hit the ground. Dalin had only cast the intermediate version of the fly spell, so he wasn’t very fast. I kept up, without it being obvious how high my strength and agility were.

Darksmith was spread across more than a dozen buildings with the auditorium near the gate. The open spaces were filled with tables, chairs, and crystal gardens so students could study out here. The alarm was a common enough occurrence that most hadn’t looked up from their work.

Professors and students flew or ran towards the auditorium at full speed, descending on the building like bees at a picnic. I was far from the last one there, running into the building, and taking a seat at the back like so many others. Dalin headed for the front.

Wink stood on the stage, discussing the situation with a group of professors from the scrying department. This was a minor call to arms which meant something had gone wrong in the dungeon and some students needed to be saved. The only thing that made this alarm different was that only senior staff and the duelling club were called.

Wink didn’t wait for everyone to arrive. “We’ve got a massive time sensitive problem. The floor boss you’ve all heard about has climbed up to the dungeon again and attacked a party that was training near the entrance to the Abyss. It has four of our students cornered at the edge of the dungeon.”

Professor Stint threw up her arms. “They’re dead. It’s very sad but fighting a floor boss from the Abyss will get more people killed, even if we make it in time.”

Wink ignored her. “The party has several VIP students among it and a scrying spell has confirmed they had a greater barrier scroll with them that the monster hasn’t penetrated. The party is made up of the Dark Lord’s daughter, Celest. Duke Kran’s daughter, Lora. Baron Graynor’s daughter Erin. And Merchant Pim’s daughter Penelope.”

Those were some of the most important students Darksmith had. They were going to kill Gorgath to get them back.

The kid being in danger snapped me out of my mood.

Without stopping to consider the consequences, I cast the deadlands spell, entering the Deadlands in a room full of sorcerers who knew what that meant. The world was plunged into black and white scene devoid of colour, as everything around me slowed to a crawl, moving at a third of their normal the pace. The lifeforce inside me began to leak out in a slow trickle.

I blurred, sprinting out of the building and academy. I didn’t slow as I entered the tunnel or when I passed through the fortress and dungeon chamber, or when I overtook the quick reaction rescue team.

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I passed through a series of tunnels before I reached the one that led to the Abyss and kept going. I was the first to arrive and I immediately spotted the party standing behind Hermione. The young genius was protecting them from Gorgath, and the greater barrier she’d raised was still intact.

A wave of relief washed through me as I examined the situation, ignoring the mangled black spirits that were crawling over the dead monsters like flees, feeding on corpses fleeing lifeforce.

Hermione was out front holding a burning spell scroll that maintained their barrier. The pulverised remains of the creatures that had climbed out of the Abyss lay in puddles all around the magical sphere, as Gorgath towered above them bringing his fists down as he attempted to break the barrier. By the way the barrier rippled, this wasn’t the first time he had struck it.

He’d clearly killed most of the creatures that had attacked them. But I don’t think he’d attacked the party immediately, because even a greater barrier wouldn’t survive this sort of punishment for more than a few minutes. So, something had triggered him to attack.

I had a feeling it was him finding out about the existence of the academy or them being sorcerers. The grin on his face was far too excited.

I put myself between the barrier and Gorgath and then stepped out of the Deadlands. As I appeared in the real world, I triple cast the deathlock spell, creating three jet black barriers above me. Gorgath’s fists smashed through the first two only just being stopped by the third. I cast the spell three more times to pin his arms and back, with a silence spell to cut off the sound coming from his mouth.

I turned to Hermione. “Fly you fools!”

Her companions didn’t need to be told twice, unleashing the flying spell they’d prepared. Hermione dropped the barrier and all four of them shot down the tunnel, as fast as their spells would carry them.

When they were out of sight, I turned to glare at Gorgath, dropping the silence spell. He’d frozen the moment he realised I was here. Before he said anything, I threw a massive death wave spell. The magic crashed through the tunnel decaying any magic it touched, withering the corpses, and making it impossible for anyone to scry on us for the next fifteen minutes.

Then I folded my arms. “Explain yourself.”

Gorgath swallowed nervously as he cracked my barriers to free himself. “Gorgath was not going to hurt them. Gorgath noticed they were in distress when he was coming to visit, so protected them. Gorgath was only going to take them, so he could learn their magic, and then trade them with their academy for more spells.”

Five minutes arounds humans, and the kid was running a racketeering business. He knew about the academy, but I believed him when he said he wasn’t going to harm them. He was a smart kid, and his people didn’t seem to believe in needless bloodshed.

“I’m their guardian Gorgath. Do you understand what that means?”

He nodded, even more nervously.

I held his gaze. “You protected them, but then you tried to take them. One action cancels the other. I owe you no debt or retribution. Nothing has changed between us.”

Gorgath grinned losing his nervousness. “Vincent did not mention that he was staying at a place where Gorgath could learn spells.”

“This is the way.”

Gorgath paused, thinking over his statement, and then nodded. Among his people children were supposed to learn on their own, so my not mentioning was expected. The real reason I hadn’t mentioned it was that, at the time, it would have complicated everything I was trying to do at Darksmith.

Now, things were different.

“I take it, you would like to learn at the academy?”

“Gorgath would like this very much.”

There was an opportunity for loot here and a way to turn this situation to my advantage and give the faculty something else to worry about. “Academies required their students to pay tuition.”

Gorgath frowned. “What is tuition?”

“It’s trade. You give them something they want and then they teach you spells.”

“Gorgath is not allowed to be in Vincent’s debt.”

“That’s why I didn’t mention the academy.”

He grinned again. “Thank you.”

I smiled at the overgrown child. “Here’s what I’ll do for you. You know those monster cores you got for me to strengthen my core from the ninth floor?”

He nodded excitedly.

“For every monster core you give me of that size, I’ll convince them to teach you a basic spell. For three, they will teach you an intermediate spell. For ten, they will teach you an advanced spell. You will pay upfront so there’s no debt.”

By human standards, I was fleecing him. By the wealth standards of the ninth floor of the abyss, I was offering him a reasonable deal. A week of work for his parents would pay his tuition for a year.

He rose to his feet. “I will go and request cores from my sire.”

***

Headmaster Wink stood in the middle of the fortress courtyard scowling. The rests of the department heads were also scowling. I’d saved the party before they’d even left the auditorium, preventing a potential war, which was the only reason we were even having this conversation.

Wink heaved a sigh. “Let me get this straight, Vincent. A floor boss from the Abyss wants to join Darksmith and learn magic.”

Hundreds of students stood on the wall above us, listening to the conversation. A floor boss from the Abyss entering a dungeon was a rare event outside of a surge and even though it had happened several times recently it was still exciting news.

“Yes. He’s intelligent, capable of learning and casting spells, and is willing to take his classes sitting outside the fortress wall.”

Wink shook his head. “No.”

His answer was to be expected, but I was going to convince him. “He’s very set on joining the academy.”

“I don’t care if he’s willing to come up here and make a fight of it. He is not joining Darksmith.”

“He’s offered to pay tuition.”

The head of the wind magic department frowned, curiosity getting the better than her. “With what?”

“Monster cores. He’s offering one core for every ten basic spells we teach him. Another for every five intermediate spells. And one for every advanced spell.”

Yes, I was taking most of his tuition.

Wink continued to scowl. “I don’t care if these cores are as big as my head and from the Abyss. There is no way we’re teaching magic to a dungeon monster.”

I opened the lid of the storage chest I’d borrowed from the fortress.

The headmaster massaged his forehead. “Don’t bother showing me. I don’t care.”

I ignored him and levitated the core out. The higher it went the bigger it grew, until I placed a minivan sized core beside me. “He’s offering cores from the ninth floor of the Abyss and they’re all this size.”

The silence that descended over the fortress as the sorcerers stared at the core with envy was amusing. So was the change in Wink. One of these cores was worth more than the annual tuition of the entire academy.

Wink’s smile couldn’t have been bigger. “Will Gorgath be requiring lunch when he attends his classes?”

***

Two days later, I was on the fortress wall having a conversation with Gorgath. He was a nice kid, so he’d managed to spark up conversations with several of the more curious students. His intimidating presence also kept anyone that wanted to take advantage of him from trying to.

“So how was your first day?”

Gorgath gave a cheerful hoot. “Gorgath has learned he can perform five types of magic: fire, water, earth, wind, and lightening. My professors have taught me the first of thirty basic spells and how to convert a spell from one magic to another. Gorgath used this to convert his basic bolt spell to each of the five elements and now Gorgath is banned from using magic in the dungeon without permission.”

The student standing guard on the wall near me muttered under his breath, “He incinerated the new dungeon boss with a single bolt of lightning. The thunderclap left everyone on duty deaf. What the heck did he expect?”

I pretended not to hear. “So, you had a good first day.”

He hooted. “Gorgath is very happy.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Gorgath is going to become the strongest sorcerer ever.”

“That very well might be the case.”