27 - Unusual Phase

I do not know much about Mila, especially not previous to her role as our teacher. One of the few things I do know is: she is famous for being the most powerful person in her generation. I always considered the world "powerful" as a warrior, mage or some combat role, but now I'm questioning myself.

"I'll finally be able to teach you how to read, write and basic math!" Mila was too happy to start the phase four.

I'm starting to think that "most powerful" may have been referring to mental capabilities instead of physical one… or did she just have a personal liking for this stuff? I know some people that truly like to read and write, other crazy ones that love math. She may be one of those people. If she really is not only the combat strongest but also a fruking smart person, the world is truly unfair.

"...Math?" Zwei questioned

"Mathematics, you should know what it is right?"

"Mathematics… Yes, I know about it!" The language pack we received at birth had the terms "mathematics", "read" and "write", but no real knowledge about the subjects themselves.

"I'll teach you the basics of it, it helps with critical and logical thinking. Also helps with military strategy and combat insight. All this is extremely important to make you a better warrior. Being stupid makes a person weak, I have defeated and killed a bunch of foolish people more powerful than me, just because I knew how to think properly. It is a very important part of your training, trust me!."

She was excited and talking more than normal, she went on and on about the importance of phase four, focused on the logical aspect for the children. How it made better warriors and other things.

Mila said some very surprising stuff. Surprising at the very least, I would describe the new information as shocking.

We were at war with other Gods. Let me focus on "WAR" and "OTHER GODS". Things were so peaceful here on the Nest that I had no idea a war on multiple fronts were happening outside. Sure, some children died here, and we have experienced lots of pain, but war? War was another level.

War between GODS? I can't even phantom it. I'm also not 100% sure what a "God" is, from what I understood, Mother is a god between many. "Gods" are incredible, out of the chart, powerful entities that are in control of part of this world. I was left with more questions than answers again.

How many Gods were there? Were we in war with all of them? Did we have allies? Alliances? What was the war for? etc...

As a matter of course, no one cared for my questions, I could not even ask them, and the children were too entertained by her stories that they did not care to question anything.

She told us of how many very powerful people she defeated, how she used strategies to do so, how many close friends she lost, and let me tell you. It was a lot. She saved the details for herself, skipping over most of the gore to tell us the important stuff, I'm grateful for that. I may be immune to extreme mental stress, thanks to Alexa, but I still don't find normal or like hearing about people dying in grotesque ways.

"I spent so much time on my stories, sorry. I always get too excited about these things. But anyways, I hope you get the importance of phase four."

"YES!"

"Good! Phase four is a mixture of mental and spiritual training. It will be the longest and last phase while you are in the Nest. Like I said before, every morning we will train here. You will need to have the minimum of control and perception of wild mana before the end, and you will need to know how to read, write and do basic math."

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I have never heard Mila talk so much. Not that she lacked explanation abilities like Adel, but she usually explained in a bit less time and less enthusiastic. She repeated herself a couple of times before declaring the start of morning training, which were a couple of hours missing now, after so much talking.

She asked us to train normally and stayed focused and teaching Einer. In the afternoon we went to the same different building as this side's entrance to the Nest's core.

"Hello Mila, came to get the books?"

"Hi Cella! Yes, I came for the books, finally."

"You really like books uhm?"

"Yes, they are amazing. You can learn so much from them, I really don't understand why people prefer to fight instead of read"

"You only say that because you are powerful Mila. "

"That's not why..."

"Whatever you say…. " The woman had an obvious ironic look on her face, but Mila just let it go and ignored it. The book person looked at every one of us, three children, as if analysing us for something, then satisfied with whatever she found, looked away in the direction of a big book case. Grabbed some and handed to Mila.

"Here we go, three sets"

"Thank you Cella!"

That was it. We took the stuff and headed home. I have absolutely no idea why Mila took us with her if she was only going to take a few books and go home. We were totally useless, just quietly following behind her and being analysed by the weird woman.

"I'll have to prepare the house for phase four, you should stay outside until night Dedication. I should have a good portion of it ready by then" Oh, was that it? She only wanted us outside so she could take care of the house.

Of course we stayed outside. Soon enough we found a couple of people we knew in the same situation, played some chess and talked about random stuff. Once the sun was nearing the horizon again, we headed home.

Well, the home was the same on the outside, but on the inside the furniture had been moved a bit. I'm not sure how since Mother had roots fixing everything on the floors… New at the far end of the room there is a bookcase with our newly acquired books in it. The bookcase is too big for just us.

In three of the shelves I could see a set of books in each. Shelves number one, two and four had books, the other 4 were empty. I keep seeing this pattern of 7, I think the maximum number of students one person can have is 7.

"Perfect! You are just in time" In time for what? It is pretty early for the normal Dedication ritual. "Sit down" Mila gesture to the same old table we used, but the Seontto that were normally embedded in it were now on top of it. Like a few jewels on the table, waiting to be stolen.

"Do you remember on your first Dedication, I said these were embedded on the table to facilitate usage for beginners? Well, congratulations, you are no longer beginners." The no-longer-beginners were happy with the news.

"From now on you will still use the Seontto in this separated form, which can be said as intermediate mastering. Sit down, I'll teach you the differences."

The stone called Seontto, which was directly linked to Mother when embedded in the table, was now 'remotely' linked. At least that's how I would describe the new situation. Since the connection was no longer physical, we would have a harder time with the exchange of mana.

To filter and receive as much mana as we were doing in 15 minutes we would need about double that, now that the link was weaker. This time would start to lower back to the 15 minutes as our mastering on the new method increased.

It was not that much different than the previous method to be fair, which is probably why they taught us that first. With the stone separated from the table, we had to start the link ourselves, this was the hardest part, the rest was ok, just slower.

In just a couple of hours all three children had successfully created a link with the Seontto and Mother, and after that was about 30 minutes to finish the Dedication.

"That was a good progress, I'm proud of you all. It will be like this from now on, you will eventually be good enough to perform it in the 15 minutes you are used to, don't worry. Also, you should take the Seontto to your room from now on as well. Be sure to bring it everyday for the Dedication and store it properly afterwards."

They did as told and took the stone to their room. The next day Zwei got up, took the stone, did the new long Dedication ritual with the others. Performed the normal supervised trained in the morning, improved near to nothing as usual.

"That would be it for the training today. Now I'll finish preparing for the start of phase four tomorrow. I'll need you to leave me alone in the house again, be back for night Dedication like yesterday."