Chapter 3: Leaving School
Returning to the academy, Soula noticed how almost no students were attending currently. Even the staff that passed him seemed depressed. Seeing as how class might've been canceled today, he went directly home.
Entering the house, Soula met a depressing atmosphere coming from his friends.
"What the heck happened?"
"Oh, hey Soula."
Regi, who answered, moved his head up slightly, but then slumped down again in depression.
"The Academy is closing in a few days. That's why we won't be able to meet up."
"Officially were all early graduates, and all of our credits will be converted to the common currency. But all of us will be transferred back home soon."
Soula knew that changes would happen, but even he didn't think that his life would change that much. Well originally he didn't want to go to school so he didn't care much.
"So why is everyone so glum?"
"We can't meet up anymore. After we planned to team up and adventure with each other."
This was a problem. It's unlikely that the schools and academies would open up. Considering the fact that the teachers had long lifespan, they probably wouldn't feel a need of urgency to open up.
"How about this, in five years all of us will reach the ages 15. At that time, all of us will be considered adults. Let's meet up again and go adventuring around the continent."
Seeing as everyone was considering the idea, everyone started thinking maybe it would work.
"My parents won't really miss me that much with them having to take care of my siblings. I think this would be the best for me," announced Regi.
"As for us, our parents should be fine with this," Rudy said. "And I'm pretty sure Soula's parents would kick him out when he's an adult anyways.
"Wait, what do you mean by that?" Soula questioned, but everyone ignored him.
"My parents actually are pro-adventurers, so they'll support me becoming one," Erica followed up.
With everyone agreeing, they all promised to come back to Academy City in five years from now.
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During the remaining years till they met, no major events happened. The triplets went home with Soula back to White Paw Village. There, everyone but Soula trained for their upcoming leave to go adventuring.
As he felt he had no real need to, Soula mainly spent his days with his parents enjoying his last days as much as possible. Sometimes he would teach the triplets, and sometimes he would spar on even terms against his warrior father and his mage mother.
Of course they were shocked when they found out that their son was almost as strong as them, so recently they started earnestly training. Sometimes they spar with the triplets and teach each other their respective moves as their teaching methods varied.
When everyone trained together, Soula continued crafting many items to train his skills.
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Soula was now currently back at the core area of the Salty Lake Forest. With the people he knew busy with their own matters, he was currently playing around with a few skills of his.
“THAT’S ALL WRONG!!!” A loud mental roar echoed in Soula’s head, making him flinch. Ever since having [Oversoul] reach level 6, he was able to communicate with the absorbed souls of his. The voice that spoke just now was the Golden Dragon from the academy material forest.
“I know you’re not technically a mage, but your spells are so sloppy. Even if they have quite good effects, a real mage would never use a spell like this.”
“What are you talking about?” questioned Soula.
“All of your spells use a set formula of the natural laws. The way you use them is by following a formula and spamming mana into it. Also, your spells are so crappy that they don’t even have levels next to them. Even the system is saying how bad your spells are. If you didn’t have an absurd amount of mana, you would be useless as a mage.”
All of his words were right on the mark. Soula has never received formal training as a mage except from a few textbooks he received in his previous life. He barely had a need for mana except for when he became a deity in his previous life as qi was his main source of energy.
“I want you to delete all of your spells from your spell list and start over as a mage.”
“Ehh, but that seems like a waste.”
“How? You know the theory behind them so you can just learn them again with the proper understanding. NOW DELETE THEM NOW!”
Listening to the Golden Dragon, he reluctantly removed all of his spells he had.
“Now, because of your previous life’s knowledge and your affinity with arcane, this will be easy.” Connected to his soul, the Golden Dragon obviously knew about how he was an abnormality. Also, as he was slightly connected, he was used to using the slang and terms from several of Soula’s memories.
“Call the incarnation in your mind. Now visualize the effect of the incanation. Try to get rid of the unnecessary work and figure out a simple solution.”
Most spells were formulas that had to be worked out to use. An example to understand is a fireball spell. X is the solution, so a fireball spell might have the following formula:
(3x + 7x)x - 7x +1
...which can be turned to:
10x² - 7x + 1
= (2x - 1) (5x - 1)
x = ½ & ⅕
So a fireball spell has a chance to do a maximum of ½ damage or a minimum ⅕ damage. But all of this is just a comparison and the laws of mana are not as easy to figure out as a algebra question.
Basically, Soula had to relearn all of his spells from the beginning and how the effects are made. A simple rank 1 spell has a 10 steps to simplify, while a relatively powerful rank 9 spell might have 1,000,000,000 steps to simplify. In general, all Soula was doing was making his spells easier to cast and have more efficiency which wasn't too hard considering that he already unconsciously did that with more uses of the spells.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
The first spell he completely mastered was the [Spiral Arrows] spell. Now it is possible for Soula to cast around 2000 arrows using only 1 MP with no cooldown and a castime limited to his reactions only. Each damage was now about 5 times the strength of his original spell, so even though he only has a single spell now, Soula had more firepower than all of his previous spells combined. Generally all mastered spells would reach the Saint Tier, but barely a few hundred exist throughout the world.
The next spell he mastered was [Gravity Burden] and [Mana Shield + Barrier EX] seemed to also be mastered soon. For [Gravity Burden] he needed the spell to help train his body, so now the spell evolved into [Gravity Control] a very useful Saint Tier Spell. Combining the steps for creating [Mana Shield + Barrier EX] added up to a total of around 1,292,134,210 steps. Even though the skills were relatively similar making simplifying similar, it still took all he could to simplify the steps into around a 1000 steps creating the spell [Protect].
Now Soula has three spells he can use:
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Spiral Arrows [Saint Tier Spell]
The concept of using mana to pierce. By mastering
the spell, you have reached the spell's highest potential.
You can make up to 2000 arrows per MP use with all
of them infused with a chosen element.
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Gravity Control [Saint Tier Spell]
Control over your own existence. The space around you is to your control.
Up, down, inwards, outwards, heavy, light, you can control the flow of gravity.
Mana cost is dependant on usage and how long you use it.
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Protect [Rank 9 Spell]
So close to becoming the unbreakable shield.
As long as your mana exist, so is your protection.
Mana cost is equal to the damage taken divided by your defense.
Breaks if the damage exceeds two times your defense.
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"Hmph, it's so unfair how you have such good potential. Mixed with the fact that you have knowledge on the natural laws and support from an awsome teacher, of course you can do this much."
"Thanks a lot. Hey, I never really thought much about it but how come you don't have a name?"
"Dragons don't follow the same rules of socializing as others. We can usually determine each other by aura, so names are useless to us if we can tell who the aura belongs to. If we talk about someone else, we send them a memory of their aura."
"Huh, that sounds annoying. I can't keep calling you Gold Dragon."
"Then call me Master. That'll make me feel good."
"Nah, I'll call you Aurum. In latin, it means gold."
"Latin? What's that?"
"Well, in my old world a part of Greece separated to become another country of its own called Rome. Their language later became Latin, but on this world Rome didn't separate from Greece, and here Greece is a fallen clan in the northern areas."
"Thanks for the history lesson, and I like the name."
"Hey, can you call out the Azure Dragon for me. I want him to teach me how to properly utilize [Oversoul]."
"Oh, I can do that for you. What do you want to learn?"
"Because I'm Lv: 6 in [Oversoul] I want to release my spirit."
[Oversoul] is not just a skill that makes you stronger. Like Soula here, people can communicate with their absorbed spirits. At higher levels, people could eventually summon an absorbed soul into an astral state where they can view the world. At the saint level, a person can activate their OS, or [Oversoul Skill], to either fuse their OS with themselves or into objects.
(AN: Borrowed the idea from Shaman King)
"Ah, so if you master this, I can look around places again. Ever since you killed me, I felt so bored locked up in your soul."
"Sorry, but you can't help it. The strong rules while the weak perish, a natural law throughout the multiverse."
"Yeah, yeah, I already know. Us dragons respect the strong so we don't blame you for killing us. Just don't make us lose face if you lose to someone when using our power."
"So what do I do?"
"Because of your OP affinity with Stellar, just imagine the desired soul exiting your body with a thread connecting the souls together. In fact, with your talent, it's currently possible to summon up to 2 souls in Astral State."
Doing as instructed, Soula reached into the vast space known to him as the soul space. Inside were countless items littered around from the inventory and several monsters that Soula defeated in the past, including his first beast soul Labbu.
"Oh hey Soula. I hear you're training to summon us outside. So how are you taking a liking to my home."
Inside the soul space, Labbu was in his majestic form from his prime. A large dragon-like body spanned for thousands of kilometers. With the aura of divinity, looking upon the sight of such a monster would leave many in awe.
"Yeah, technically with my affinity I can summon you and Aurum now, so wanna go out?"
"Aurum? I guess you mean the Golden Dragon. Yeah I'll go out and see how much of a mess you made of my lair."
"Okay, just wait for me to summon you." Exiting the soul space, Soula connected Aurum and Labbu to his soul with a tiny thread. Then he slowly willed the thread to pull them out.
Materializing in front of him were two astral bodies of the souls he summoned. One was a cute tiny yellow dragon with round nudges around his body. Another was a grey dragon with skin like a crocodile. Both of them seemed to be summoned in a chibi form.
“"W-What the hell! Soula what did you do?”"
...oh shit.