Out of the frying pan and into the fire, so the saying goes. Though he managed to get out of the said fire, Theodore had found himself back onto the pan. It took him three days to put the two and two together as Elder Kalman, the one placed in charge of him and was supposed to be his master, was somewhat of a hermit and Theodore was unable to meet him till three days after arrival.
Though he had heard from Fiana, who turned out to be the elder's daughter, that Kalman was a master of alchemy, it wasn't until he met with Kalman himself that he discovered that while the man could certainly be called a genius in alchemy, he was talentless in actual magic. Though alchemy was a field taught by the Mage Tower, it wasn't considered a proper field of magic.
Once again, Theodore was in a bit of a predicament. To be assigned to a master that could not train him in magic severely limited his ability to gain any significant power so long as he was under him. Though he held the knowledge of the Demon Lord, he possessed only one-half of the puzzle.
The other half of the puzzle was the amount of Aether Theodore had at his disposal. It was only a matter of fact that the greater amount of Aether one could manipulate, the more powerful and complex a technique they could perform. However, unless he's in a place thick with Aether, the greatest source of Aether he could tap into was himself, which couldn't be considered much.
It was almost laughable. Despite being a Demon Lord reborn, the amount of Aether aggregated within his body was only a little above the average of regular humans.
Of course, after long years of research, the mages of the Mage Tower had found methods to artificially inflate one's Aether capacity to a great degree. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty in acquiring the necessary resources, they were under strict regulation by the Mage Tower and were distributed to only a selected few.
Confident in his talent as he was, Theodore found the chances of him having access to the resources to be slim. This was due to Kalman being a master of alchemy, a field that was not considered magic proper. Kalman had no reason to request that his student have access to resources that involved something that had no direct relation to the training of alchemical arts. Elder within the Circle of Mages Kalman might be, even he couldn't be too unreasonable, as the other elders would surely protest, elders who were masters of proper fields of magic.
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As far as the mages were concerned, power equated to authority, and an alchemist, no matter how brilliant, had very little raw power at their disposal.
In the end, being placed under Elder Kalman was but another one of the Circle of Mages' ploys. As they had not yet decided what to do with Theodore, they made sure to limit his access to power for the time being. With the sense of time of those elderly mages who had lived long past a human's natural lifespan, it could take years before they finally decide what to do with him.
While Theodore himself had no clear idea as to what the Circle of Mages was up to, he had an inkling that they meant to hinder his growth in power. Though he could simply wait and see what the elders would do, he rather not be a sitting duck when the time comes for his life to be decided by the whims of others.
In everything, power is required. Without a measure of power, nothing can be done. It was even more so in Lancea, the city of mages, where there were huge disparities of power between individuals. If Theodore wished to move as he will within the city, power was necessary.
Of course, his troubles did not simply end with the nature of the city. There was one other thing...
It had been ten years since the Demon Lord fell. Those that had inherited the Demon Lord's fragments, the Demon Lord Larvae, ought to be on the move by this time. To fight and devour one another, to be the last one standing, to become the one true Demon Lord, such was the destiny of those 'gifted' with the Demon Lord's Aether.
Even if Theodore wanted nothing to do with it, as a possessor of a fragment of the late Demon Lord, conflict was inevitable. Drawn were the scattered 'souls' of the Demon Lord towards one another, silently crying out in their desire to fulfill the Demon Lord's ambition. Theodore could run, but he could not hide forever. One of these days, someone *will* come for him.
In fact, he might have already become involved in a battle without knowing it. After all, if a Demon Lord Larva desires to survive till the end, they'll require power. And where better to find power than in a place where hundreds of years of knowledge were gathered, where knowledge could readily be turned into power? Surely, the fragments had already begun to gather in this very city.
If Theodore wished not to melt like butter on this frying pan he found himself on, he's going to have to work something out soon.
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End of Chapter 31
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