It was one hectic week that flew by. They cloned the three volunteers successfully, and the grossed out feeling of literally hacking someone else in pieces to regrow them didn't diminish at all. Cythrel was able to bleach two of the smaller-than-black-pepper cores per session now but she still needed to polish her wizardry and spellcraft skills to learn Sylph's Hand. Now with four out of four successes under their belt, the event grisly entitled 'Day of the Hacksaw' was nearing.
not before some special preparations were in place. The first preparation was to send Dawn and Aidan down the crypts to harvest more cores. A lot more cores. This time Cythrel and Pearl stayed behind,
Lucien of all people joined them. His excuse was to protect Dawn. It wouldn't hurt to have a capable warrior and Light mage with them anyway.
Dawn and Aidan were currently resting to recover mana. Lucien and Sora were fighting boredom.
"I am impressed at the size of these cores," The heir to the throne of Yutis commented, handling a few cores the size of a pinky's nail. "If I hadn't seen with my own eyes, I would not believe they came from ordinary skeletons."
"Yes, even Lumina came to congratulate me after I demonstrated the spell at our final examination a year and half ago. That was why I got tangled with her during the assassination attempt." Aidan replied.
Lucien's gaze met Dawn's eyes, and she shook her head, "I'm Dawn, not Lumina. This is Lumina's body, so it is fine to call me 'sister'."
"Yes, yes. Whatever you want, sister." He dismissed the uncomfortable subject of his sister's split personality. "But I must say, this is too boring. You just destroy the undead right after we find them, there is no chance of fighting. I also have no idea how, even the miasma of the catacombs is lessening."
"Yeah." Aidan agreed. "It made the church crusaders at the entrance really worried last time we were here. It is because this spell is an area spell. It sucks all the Underworld-attuned mana in the area into the cores."
"Also the reason we are stopping to rest so often. We overcharge the spells to maximize the size of the cores." Dawn completed.
The prince was obviously disconcerted by the reality he was exposed to. These cores could sell for fifteen gold each, and they had fifty already. They were bound to get out of the dungeon with a haul of a thousand gold or more once they were done with. Why do they need that many cores? They always evaded the question every time he brought it up, chalking it up to orders from the Archmage. Lucien knew that barking in front of the Headmaster's door would bring nothing, even for the Crown Prince. That was a dead end.
He had yet another doubt.
"Sister, how come you can use Underworld magic with the same effect as Aidan? Your Element is Sky, the opposite of Underworld."
"Wrong. Lumina's Element is Sky," Dawn answered, evasively.
"You can use Sky magic. I've seen you flying." He was totally lost.
"Indeed I did." She spoke curtly, cleary signaling him to stop.
"How? What is your Element then? It can't be the legendary Rainbow Element!"
"That name is silly, no. Your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea what my Element is."
"Guys, can we stop bickering? We are in the middle of a dungeon filled with the undead." Sora chastised the two. "Your Royal Highness' doubts will be cleared out soon enough. Right now we have a mission to accomplish."
"Yes and we are only halfway there." Aidan perked up and picked himself off the ground, " Let's go and try to finish it before we clear the fourth floor."
Lucien gasped. "Why do you need a hundred grade-D cores?"
"Ask the Headmaster. And almost all of these are grade-E," He answered and completed, "All I can say is that this is needed to bring Lumina back."
Lucien groaned in defeat.
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"Good, good. What a haul. Reminds me of old times," Astromelicus looked at the collection of cores from one day of exploration. A hundred forty-five were collected, the forty-five smaller ones were donated to the royal treasury. The Headmaster sang, "Time to torture students... I mean, another collective mana affinity training session."
Cythrel pointed a stump at the Archmage, "I KNEW IT."
The old man nonchalantly grabbed a small crate of tiny cores and placed it on the elf's desk. "Homework!" He crooned and chuckled. "I expect you to bleach all these grade-G cores on your own time by next week."
She sunk in her desk and hugged the crate with her arms, placing her head over the lid. She started to channel raw mana through the whole crate.
"As for you, cadet Aidan and student Dawn, I got orichalcum dust ink. You are going downstairs to redraw the permanent ritual circle. Tonight we are going to perform the ritual on all seven subjects."
Dawn picked up the jar of ink and looked closely at the glowing dust of orichalcum inside, "What is the concentration of this ink?"
"four grams per liter." He answered with a grin.
"Did you seriously raided the Kingdom's supplies for the hero summoning ritual?" She made a wild guess.
The memories of the ritual were locked deep inside Lumina's mind, to which they had no access. However, Pearl knew and she covered her mouth at the same time Astromelicus raised an eyebrow.
"And it seems I hit the jackpot," Dawn concluded.
"You can see that it's a contradiction to keep the ink when we don't have the summoner. We can procure more ink easier than to breed and train a new summoner. And I cannot see the next generation of royalty working on it anytime soon. Or am I wrong?" He looked at Dawn and Pearl. Both girls vehemently dismissed any chance of that happening anytime soon.
Getting more ink was no simple task. While mithril can occur occasionally in deep silver deposits, adamantite rarely in deep platinum or titanium veins tainted with cobalt, orichalcum seldomly forms when veins of gold, copper, mercury, and silver join under pressure and heat in volcanic mana-infused areas. And those places are usually the lair of elder dragons. To add insult to injury, the ink is part of the training package for a new hero summoner.
'It makes one wonder how much someone out there wants otherworlder heroes to be summoned,' mused Dawn.
Aidan sighed, "We will need to recalculate the aetheric transfer matrix from scratch to account for the ink conductivity. It will take three days."
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The archmage cleared his throat and grumbled, "It will take three days and twenty minutes because someone insisted on looking the gift horse in the mouth. Get to work." He shooed the pupils.
Aidan and Dawn sat on their desks and began doing the calculations for the realignment of the ritual circle diagrams. Pearl looked around, noticing that she was without a task.
"Student Pearl, don't worry, you shall not suffer from idleness. I got this for you." He pushed the set of a hundred cores farmed in the catacombs, "Bleach the ten smaller cores in this batch."
Cythrel, head laying on the crate of grade-G cores, snored.
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The upgraded ritual circle was a success, with something between fifteen to twenty-five percent better mana conductivity. It meant shaving one hour forty minutes for the same effect as a ten-hour ritual with the old circle without using cores. However, Aidan increased the number of cores usable per casting from twenty to thirty. They did the ritual on all seven subjects, Kamak plus the three volunteers and their clones. All of their souls were fully restored by the end of the week.
They were back at the laboratory for their private lesson.
"And now we are going to try for several unknown Element combinations. We have two mages with all six affinities, we need to use this advantage the most."
Before we lose them, the unspoken finisher was floating around. There was no doubt that their affinities would plummet once Lumina was separated and the fusion process, halted.
Aidan and Dawn were sitting on top of mana-barrier mandalas. They are usually placed in prisons for very powerful mages when the mana-draining manacles are not enough and have the property of completely blocking the flow of ambient mana, effectively denying the mage from recovering mana.
"First thing, mix Light and Darkness."
They focused and from each palm yellow and purple orbs appeared, mixing in the middle. A grey blob of oozing mana appeared. It looked like a floating translucid fluid, leaking very little light or magic emission.
"What is this? Are you sustaining it?" Astromelicus asked.
Aidan withdrew his hands, "No. It is just floating there on its own. Looks very stable." He reached out and poked a finger in it. "Cold to the touch, no reaction. That may be due to my own mana signature. I can feel it flowing up my finger. I can control and shape it if I focus."
He made the blob take the shape of a house, a castle, a carriage, a doll. Without much detail.
"It looks like an ooze or a slime," Cythrel commented. "But naming it Slime Element is silly."
"It has a spiritual property," Aidan commented, the grey matter covering his whole hand. "It feels like another dimension inside. Like untyped mana but stable."
Untyped mana cannot be concentrated or congealed as Elemental mana can. It will dissipate or circulate and then dissipate harmlessly into the ambient. This is the reason the training spell 'Mana Bolt' does little to no damage and crosses most materials.
Dawn was silent focusing on her own sphere of grey mana. "Let me power a basic bolt spell with this."
"____ Bolt."
The grey mana fused into a basic bolt spell and traveled slowly until it hit the barrier. It broke the mandala and dissipated once it mixed with ambient mana.
"That is Ether," Pearl declared. "It overcharged the mandala diagram and burned the conduits."
"And it means that Ether mages cannot be bound or imprisoned while conscious. An interesting discovery." Astromelicus filled in one of the two most argued-about spots in the dual-Element diagram. "Next is Earth and Light. Cadet Aidan, dismiss your Ether and start charging."
As soon as he began charging, the whole building rumbled. Aidan stopped at once.
"It is good to know, and even better that the one to attempt it has some immunity to divine punishment," Astromelicus stated with fear. "Note to all involved, never try to mix Earth and Light. It is as Archmage Dvav predicted."
"What would that do?" Cythrel asked, just for curiosity.
"Something that even the most powerful otherworlders we ever met fear. They spoke of it. Things that could create explosions that disintegrate Kingdoms and poison the land and air forever. The end of all life. Death for a thousand years. From the few reports we know, their world is at a constant threat of being destroyed by that Element."
"Will Aidan be okay?" Cythrel asked, worried.
"Yes, his affinities and own mana signature mean he is almost immune to the Element he created." He allowed a small pause, "Proceeding forward. Please mix all four basic elements to form Life and add Light."
It formed a blinding light. When their eyes got used to it, they saw water, earth, lava, winds, fire, trees, grass, clouds inside the sphere. It was like a door to the primal forces of...
"Creation." Astromelicus declared. "This Penta-Element combination shall be named Creation. The same effect should be obtained mixing Holy and Earth." Aidan tried, and it happened.
The headmaster gave detailed instructions on the next one.
"This one will be dangerous. Get ready to dismiss the mana at the first sign of danger. Mix Life and Darkness."
A black void appeared, sucking everything inside. The motes of dust on his clothes, Aidan's hair, even his hands. The first layer of skin in them vanished before he dismissed the mana.
"The opposite of Creation, Destruction. Aidan, heal yourself."
Aidan healed himself and proposed, "The same effect should happen if we mix Death and Air, right?"
"Indeed. Are you sure you want to try?"
"Here it goes. I'll dismiss as soon as it starts sucking in the wind."
After confirming the Destruction Element, Astromelicus frowned. "We only have time for one more try before it is lunch time. Mix all six elements. Create Sky in one hand and Underworld in the other."
Aidan groaned and forced the Sky element to appear. The golden orb was unblemished. On the other hand, the dark brown Underworld appeared as if was always there. He mixed the elements. Once more a blinding light appeared. When they recovered sight, the orb was dark,
not the ominous void. It had an eerie, everpresent underglow with dots like the stars. Some dots were blinking, some spinning slowly. Orbs of colored matter circling each other and going around a glowing sphere and motes of ice darting around. Colorful clouds far beyond. A sense of depth and distance, eternity.
"So pretty." Cythrel cooed.
"One thing we can be sure of, this is not a Rainbow." Pearl pointed out.
"I told Lucien. Rainbow is a silly name." Dawn hooted and froze right after.
Aidan also froze, and both bodies seemed to be staring at the orb of stars. Pearl shook Dawn but she didn't react. And then they spoke at the same time.
"This is Cosmos. The Hexa-Element is Cosmos."