Both of them was back in the tower with Stella teleportation. She led him to a room on the third floor. The room was void of any furniture and equipment unlike any other room that Serias has went to in these past few days. The only exception is a crystal orb that is floating right in the middle of the room.
“What we’re going to do?”
“Not we, you only. Well, I’m going to test your magic affinities so that I could plan out your next training”
“Why now? Not before” Serias asked with face full of dissatisfaction.
“Fools! You can’t even feel your own mana, how come we could test your affinities?” retorted Stella while waving her hand to the orb. Her hand motion activated the whole room. White light from the ceiling lit the whole room. She stood at one corner of the room.
“Put your hand on the orb and channel your mana into it”
“How?”’
“Remember the sensation of mana flowing in your body. Will your own mana flow into the orb, imagine it, imagine the mana flowing from your body into the orb. That will do the trick, for the meantime”
Serias put his hand on the orb and channeled his mana into it. For the first minute nothing happens. Then, the orb glow red before changing to blue, green and brown before dimming slightly. He thought the myriad of colors were beautiful when suddenly a blinding white light shot out of the orb illuminating the whole room white. Serias thought that his retinas were burned. The white light devoured his whole body and then it was black.
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Serias open his eyes and found himself lying on his bed. He glanced outside to find that it’s already dark. His eyes still hurt like hell from the blinding white light. He quickly went back up on his feet and started walking toward Stella’s study.
Knocking slowly the door, he could heard a faint “enter” sound before slowly opened the wooden door with delicate handle. He found that Stella was writing something on the paper at the study desk. Slowly, he brought himself to the seat in front of Stella. Heaving a sigh, he let out his first question.
“What was that earlier?”
Slowly putting the quill that she used, Stella look straight into Serias’ eyes.
“Well, accident do happens after all. No need to worry too much. To tell you, after analysing the orb after you fell unconscious the result has come out”
Stella told him that he has high affinities with fire, water, air and earth and last but not least the highest affinities is light. He was dumbfounded to think that his highest affinities was light. Thinking back, he doesn’t know what light affinities could be used for.
“You must be thinking how the light affinities is useless. Well, how wrong you are if you thought about that. All Archivist from the first one until me has the highest affinities for light. I’ll show you later how powerful the people with highest light affinities is.”
Serias could only feigned silence. Seeing him like that, Stella clapped her hand twice to bring his attention again.
“We’ll start tonight’s lecture then. Today is about affinities and Spell Level.”
Affinities are traits that allows someone to manipulate an element easily. Without affinities, someone could also cast a magic but with longer time. The incantation is also longer and the magic circles and magic circuit needed is also bigger. The higher the affinities the higher the abilities of someone to manipulate an element. They could also use chantless magic, cutting down the time to activate the magic considerably. Not many people could do this.
Spell Level on another hand is the degree of a spell. It was divided into 11 level from the lowest level, level 10 to the highest level, level 0. Level 10 is called beginner level, while the level 0 contained the forbidden spell that could even destroy a country. A level 0 spell in all her knowledge were only available to the Archivist as level 0 spell was created by the Archivist. For example is Scorched Earth, an Earth element spell. It will turn all land and earth within 1 km radius of the spell caster into molten lava. The molten lava then will proceed to swallowed anything on its surface, living or non-living alike.
“That is the gist of it. With that, the lecture is finished. And you still remembered the mana cultivation technique that you read before. Use it well. That is the only way to fill your mana pool quickly in the spans of a decade”
With a slight nod as a gratitude, Serias dragged his legs back into his bedroom and he sat on the floor trying to meditate. He want to start his mana cultivation. Emptying his mind, he try to feel the sensation that he feel before. Before long the sensation of something cold rushing down his bloodstream. Remembering the guide, he try making his soul absorb mana. Slowly he feel the cold mana rush into his head. It could be thought like filling empty bottle with water. Slowly he feel the sleepiness was swept away as he try feeding his soul with more mana. The mana that is filling his soul could be felt like water in a container. After feeling that he could not feed any more mana, he divert the ambient mana into his body, refining it through his soul into his own internal mana. This time he absorb the mana into his own body, storing it in each muscle. Without knowing, this process make his muscle stronger.
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It’s already morning when he finished his mana cultivation. He feel refreshed even without a wink of sleep. He get up on his feet, he punch the empty air. The speed of the punch shocked him. Thinking for a while, he didn’t thought that the mana cultivation could make someone stronger. What he read in the guide didn’t mentioned about body being stronger with only mana cultivation.
Serias went down to the kitchen to prepare the breakfast. A little while later Stella step into the kitchen and after sitting on the chair gobbled down the bread that he had prepared before. Sitting down facing Stella, he took the teapot and poured down the tea into the teacup on the saucer.
“Can mana cultivation make the body stronger?”
“Yes it can, but I’ll advise you to not do it at this early stage. I’ll explain it after this”
Finishing their breakfast, Stella brought Serias to the first underground floor, the training room. The white wall, floor and ceiling make the room look very spacious. The sound of their footstep falling on the floor made a slow noise as they enter the room.
As the door close behind them, Stella flicked her fingers. The scenery of white room immediately change into a typical dojo style training room. But the difference between typical dojo is, on the left side of the door, a wide array of weapon was neatly arranged on their rack. Serias could see weapon like dagger, broadsword, katana, bow and arrows, and others that he could not identified.
This room with Stella’s explanation could materialize any scenery and battleground for practice. It could even materialize fake living organism that could be used as practice. For example, it could also materialize the previous archivist for the sake of training. Stella also told that her master had materialized a hundred thousand army and commanded her to destroy all of it. She could only finished the task after two full days of fighting. The time in the practice room could also be accelerated so that someone could practice faster. The maximum limit that the room can accelerate time is 50 time.
“Take one sword” Stella order Serias.
Serias, with hesitation, moved to the weapon rack and choose one short sword. And moved to Stella’s front. Facing Stella, he could see Stella wielding a blade made of pure light in her right hand. It glowed in yellowish hue. “Oh crap!” was the only thing that he could thought at that time.
“Strike me” Stella ordered.
Lurching forward unsteadily, Serias swung his short sword down from above trying to break Stella stance. And the sound of steel meeting steel could be heard. He was dumbfounded. Stella defended with only her left hand. He observed properly the hand and could see a thin layer of light was formed on her palm. The short sword was stop directly on the layer of light. In a moment Stella counterattacked with her blade in the left hand. The blade cut through the short sword like a hot knife slicing a butter cutting the short sword into two with ease. His eyes were wide open.
“This is one of the specialty of the Archivist. We could manipulate light to our will. People only thought that someone with light affinities could only use healing and buff. See this.”
A few orb of light formed in front of Stella. The orb glowed slightly before firing a beam of light toward the target practice a good 100m from where she was standing. The target was pierced leaving only blackish hole on it. Serias’ mouth was wide agape at the destructive power of the beam. The target practice from his observation is made of steel and yet could not even stop the beam.
“Did you change your opinion now?”
“Isn’t this thing is too overpowered?”
“Well, you’ll regret it later if you don’t have it. The world is big. It’s full of surprise. You’ll never know what await you”
“There is also the Light Stance, the form of combat art devised by generations of Archivist that used ultra light
weight weapon as the weapon made from light is almost weightless. It contained 35 stance that could be used with any close range weapon. From the 35 stance 20 stance is attacking stance with of it 17 of it could be chain with each other. Another 15 stance is defence stance. The 17 attacking stance could be executed even in the defence stance. It is a formidable combat art that could change on the fly. The 3 other is Light Step, Frenzy and the Death Stance. Light Step make someone move at near speed of light. Without special enhancement, anyone that execute Light Step will be crushed to death by the momentum. That is why I asked you to not cultivate the mana into your body. Just wait until you’ve undergone the special enhancement. Frenzy is stance that increase the strength while Death Stance is the finisher”
With a long lecture Serias could finally understand the high light affinity usefulness. He want to asked a few question when he was cut short.
“Well, enough with the banter. I’ll make you master all of the weapon in this room before this year end. This training room time has been accelerated to the maximum 50 times. So you’ll spend another 8 months real time while your magic training could be started at a later date. But, your mana cultivation and mana shaping training will continue on along.
With a long no from Serias, they started the special training.