It wasn't difficult for Mihe to dodge the knife flying at their face by merely tilting their head.
"Alright! This will be our first lesson: 'How to react to threats!'" Yakti started with a wide grin on his face. "Firstly! What does our class think is the right reaction to a threat?"
The knife near their face dissipated as they returned to a sitting upright position.
"Maybe try to de-escalate the situ-"
"ERRRRRRRRRRRR!" The eye-hands from him began to gather threads before forming another knife that'd be thrown with great speed at their foot.
Once again, the "Preparation time" before the knife was thrown was long enough for them to move their foot out of the way of the knife.
"You need to react to all threats by-" Yakti started before cutting himself off. Now that he thought about it, they didn't seem to have any fear of the knives that he was throwing at them. Initially, he thought it was because Mihe was a psychopath, but that by itself wouldn't explain how they reacted to both knives.
While the first knife was prepared so that after it'd be thrown, it'd curve out of the way so as not to hit them in the face. The second one, however, was thrown at a much faster speed. Not only that, but the distance between the two wasn't nearly enough for them to predict the trajectory and move away from the knife in such a short amount of time.
"Is something wrong, Yakti?" Mihe inquired.
He shook his head to refocus before answering, "Yeah, something is very wrong, how the hell did you dodge that knife?"
They tilted their head "Uhm... It's not particularly difficult to dodge your knife. After all, when you were forming the knife with those eye hands you pointed the tip directly to where you were going to throw it. It was..." They tried to think of a way to respond without infuriating him "Easier? Yes, easier to dodge than you might've expected?"
Aorin and Yakti looked at each other in shock. While they knew Mihe was a special person, this was well beyond both of them.
Aorin took the initiative. "Hey, Mihe?"
"Yes, Miss Aorin?" They made sure to refer to her as 'Miss' moving forward to reaffirm her femininity. Asking 'Aorin's a woman?' made them feel a kind of guilt that they didn't think could be resolved even by the end of their life.
"...Were Yakti's eyes and those 'eye hands' you said glowing by any chance?"
They nodded "They were even glowing the same color as his eyes."
By this point, Yakti was beginning to laugh with extreme joy as the two cut their conversations short to look at the humored chinchilla man struggling to breathe.
Gasping for air after the laughing fit, he stated "So this pinkie psychopath has a whole entire magical field and isn't even aware of it!? What a fucking joke!"
Taken aback by the intense laughter, they would turn to her again "M-Miss Aorin, what is he talking about?"
She began trying to calm down as she responded to their question, "I don't know how to put it, but the number of people who could see those 'eye hands' are so few that I thought it was just a baseless rumor when I first heard about them.
"If such people did exist... Well, I shouldn't be saying 'if' because you exist, they'd be of an echelon of society that not even I belong to despite being a KMK.MP."
They didn't know why that was important "...Are KPK.MKs a part of high society then?"
Initially, she was confused before she remembered that Mihe doesn't have any memories, of course, they wouldn't know what a KMK.MP is.
"It's KMK.MP means 'Karinomaki Member of Parliament'. Karinomaki is a country on one of the Eastern continents. It is where Shirah, like me or Kentei, comes from." She points to the child on the bed.
They nodded before finally digesting what she just said. If she's a member of a parliament for a country on an entirely different continent, why is she here!? It just doesn't make any sense, however, before they could ask more questions, Yakti finally spoke up.
"No those people exist, they're just not common among Shirah cause your kind is dogshit at magic. They're not super common, but I've heard of one in the Dual Crown." He started, waiting for the two to turn their attention to him.
"The Royal Commissioner of the Imperial Army; from what I've heard about them, they're probably the only person in the entirety of the Dual Crown to be strong enough to have a field."
"And how strong is that?" Mihe asked.
"Probably strong enough to destroy one of the capitals. Maybe they'd struggle a bit because Port Almano is a collection of islands rather than one city and New Raastia is in the middle of a forest with strong monsters but they definitely could do it."
Their eyes opened wide as they went through the answer. While they knew they were of a special kind, they didn't expect it to be that they were comparable to someone who could destroy the entire city!
"...Are you certain I'm of the same level of strength as the Royal Commissioner?"
"Hell no! You're some dumbass who woke up, you're probably as strong as Kentei when asleep!" He would chuckle a bit before providing a genuine answer.
"While your yellow iris indicates you're most likely on the 9th tier like the Commissioner, I don't think you'd win if you fought them even if you had your memories. After all, they had been fighting in wars since they were like an infant or something, they'd probably have more fighting power than you ever could even if the two of you theoretically are equals in terms of magic."
The conversation began to enter a standstill as nobody knew what to say any more until Yakti broke the silence.
"Either way! I think I'm gonna find Mihe a Grimoire!" He would begin turning back into the old man as he rapidly climbed up the ladder.
"Wait! Don't you thi-" Aorin started only to be glared at by the 'old man' and would cut herself off.
"That's what I thought." He would finish climbing up the ladder before slamming the trapdoor shut like an angry child after an argument with their mother.
She let out an exasperated breath before Mihe turned to her.
"Why do you put up with that?"
"Put up with what?" She was confused by their question.
"Uh, Yakti's treatment. Doesn't it seem a bit much?"
Her normally expressive face would lose all emotion as she stated in a monotone voice "It's not up to you to decide what's a bit much or what isn't. I'll worry about me. You should worry about you."
Not a good topic to discuss. They redirected the conversation to another topic from there.
"Alright well if you're not going to answer that then at least tell me what a tier is? He said that my Iris indicated some kind of tier and I didn't really know what he was talking about."
She would get up and move to the table so that Mihe didn't have to turn their head so hard just to continue to face her.
"Tiers are just how we categorize people based on magic, each tier is associated with an eye color. Generally, all adults will start off on tier 5 which is indicated by having turquoise color eyes. You're currently probably tier 9 since one of your eyes is yellow but I can't say for certain because of the other eye.
"People at a tier above the 7th one, are pretty much impossible to find. Above 9th you're entering the territory of a legend. Humans think that at the 10th level and beyond you get access to a magical field."
This answer was helpful but now new questions were floating in their mind. What is a magical field to begin with? Additionally, if Mihe was of such a rare variety of people who were supposedly powerful enough that they could destroy an entire capitol, wouldn't the Imperial Guard from earlier try to report them?
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The latter question they knew Aorin was probably incapable of solving, she is only a member of parliament of an entirely different country which doesn't have anyone of a tier 9-10 range so she wouldn't know how to handle such a situation. Thus, there was only one question that was pressing but needed to be resolved.
"Alright then, what is a 'magical field' then?"
She would sigh before answering. "Yakti got some book a while back on Magical Field Theory, I have no idea why he even read it but it's just some random theory humans peddle to explain how magic works.
"Us Shirah have always had weak magical strength so we pretty much never think about magic. It's a useful tool for constructing more useful tools and that's where our thinking of magic lies.
"In the Shirah schools though, I do remember some introductory units on magic, things about how magic is the soul's imposition of the world or something." She shrugged "I just like to think of it as weird thoughts go in and weird stuff goes out honestly."
Mihe was even more confused by this rambling.
"Uhm..."
"Oh right, you should probably learn something about magic, I can't teach it to you too well, once again, just a politician, never needed to know it. But I think he might've left his Magic Field Theory book somewhere here." While she was saying this, she was glancing around the room before eventually searching under the bed, pulling out a dusty book, and tossing it to Mihe.
They caught it as they looked at the front cover "MFT For Dummies! Learn the Inner Workings of Magic and Become a Modern-Day Expert!"
It was a fairly small thing, something they should be able to read in just a couple of hours which honestly alarmed them at the integrity of the content within it so they turned to Aorin in hopes that she could dispel his worries but she was already doting over her son and they didn't want to bother her.
However, there wasn't much else for them to do besides read the book, so thus they did.
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Well, that was a poor choice. It wasn't incredibly difficult to read, in fact, it was pretty easy to read, but each statement that was being made seemed to conflict with what they observed when they saw magic being performed in the world.
From what they could gather though, it seemed like the thought was that magic is some sort of "liquid" in the air that stores states of being "excited" or "relaxed" and that the "excitements" and "relaxations" relate to some kind of "wave frequency" (Mihe had no idea what any of these terms meant and there weren't any definitions in the small book). When the liquid is at an "excited" frequency it can be "moved" around and this "motion" causes it to create either a spell, a reconfiguration, an ability effect, or a gathering.
There was something useful though, in the book was this table.
Magic Types
Internal Origin
External Origin
Internal Effect
Reconfiguration
Gathering
External Effect
Ability
Spell
With the following definitions:
Origin: Where the "excited" liquid is in relation to your or another living entity's body.
Effect: Where the "motion" of the "excited" liquid goes in relation to a living body.
Internal: Inside of a living body.
External: Outside of a living body.
The table defined 4 kinds of magic, all magic that 'starts' being formulated within the body and stays inside of it is a 'Reconfiguration', but if the magic is formulated outside of the body and brought inside you get a 'Gathering'. When the magic 'starts' within the body but it causes something to happen outside of it, the magic is an 'Ability', and if that magic 'starts' outside of the body and ends outside, it is a spell.
While the idea of "excited" or "relaxed" liquid in the air causing magical effects made no sense, the concepts of the 4 types of magic could explain why Yakti's transformation and the stranger's wailing didn't result in those eye-hands existing but Gedaous' healing magic and the magic of the priestess and bishop did result in it happening.
Most likely, Yakti's transformations were 'Reconfigurations', the healing spell that Gedaous cast on them was probably a 'Gathering', the other magics he had used, as well as the ones that the priestess and bishop used, were probably 'spells'.
The concern now is the wailing they had heard from the stranger. That seemed to be an ability, but it's not clear. It blurred the line between reconfigurations and abilities as while it was clear that the magic probably had an internal origin (evidenced by the lack of the eye hands), it wasn't clear if the effect was external or if it was also internal.
They would love to ask questions, but the idea of describing their experiences with magic wasn't an appealing one. Especially after considering that Aorin had stated herself that she never cared for magic. This would be something they need to discuss with Yakti when he gets back.
Now that they thought about it, there wasn't any obvious reason why he left yet.
"Aorin, do you know why Yakti had to leave?"
Aorin, at this time, was still watching over her sleeping son before breaking concentration.
"I'm sorry I got distracted, what did you ask?"
"Yakti, why did he leave?"
"Oh!" She jolted, "He needed to find you a Grimoire. Hopefully, you'll be able to learn a spell or two from them."
"Grimoire? What's that?" They tilted their head.
"Something used to teach you spells, I don't know too well the details of them, but when you go to one they'll do some fancy magic that'll teach you some spells."
"Could I not cast that magic myself?" They further inquired.
"Dunno, I think one of the gods wished it to be that way so it went that way. You'd have to ask a divinity historian, beyond me."
That was useless, at least they now knew that Yakti was trying to teach them magic which somewhat excited them.
"I didn't expect him to be that kind..." Mihe muttered to themselves.
"He just wants you to improve your fighting skills, so when we deliver devil horns and get into a fight, you can reduce our chances of losing."
They nodded until they fully processed the 'devil horns' part of the answer.
Delivering devil horns!? Why is there a market for such a thing!? Is that why this place was so sketchy???
"W-What? Devil horns? What do you mean we'll be delivering devil horns?"
"Oh yeah, devils are one of the two after-wanderer races, angels would be the other. Devils have horns that make for pretty good magically conducting material. People like it for that so they get collected and harvested. Yakti buys his supply from a dealer in the Collective and distributes on their behalf all around New Raastia during government seasons."
At this point, Mihe got used to hearing terms they didn't understand, so they didn't question her and simply moved on.
"So I'm going to be fighting then?"
"Sadly, yes. That's what you'll be doing. Don't think of it as fighting fighting though. Think of it more as to protect me and Kentei over here" She rubbed the boy's forehead.
"Either way, I want to reconfirm something, you said you spent most of your day yesterday in a trash bin correct?" she asked.
Mihe nodded.
"We should probably take you to a shower, you still have that stench of garbage on you." she sighed as she got up and began moving towards the stairwell.
They tried to get up as well but felt a sharp pain in their chest. As they touched the location of the pain, it intensified. They had entirely forgotten about their wounds not being fully healed.
"Something the matter, Mihe?" Aorin noticed something was wrong.
"Yes, I believe I injured myself in the fight, and that guard's healing gatherings didn't fully heal me"
She would move to Mihe, crouch down, and pick them up in a bridal carry with her lower two arms, tightly gripping their arms and legs. They didn't resist at all, as something about this felt oddly comforting while being carried up the ladder, through the trap door, and into the bakery's preparation room on the base floor.
Once in the preparation room, she would close the trap door and unlock a door at the end of the room that Mihe didn't notice which led into a bathroom with a shower and a sink, gently dropping Mihe on the floor to stand up.
"Wash yourself here, I'll be outside if you need any assistance, so just yell for me, okay?" they nodded as Aorin walked out of the bathroom.
It was a shabby thing. A small hose that dangled over a wooden tub seemed to be the source of the water. Opposite the tub was a 'toilet,' in reality, it was a bucket with an odd stone inside.
There was also a small basin on top of a metal stand that had a sliver of soap on its edge with a mirror over it, they assumed this was the sink, but there wasn't a faucet. Mihe figured that the hose on the tub would probably go over the sink too.
Mihe would look at the hose and try to figure out how it works but frankly was utterly clueless. They sighed as they began to try to get out of the bathroom, but passing their reflection the 'Course of the Inevitable' would appear again.
Their curiosity got the better of them as they began investigating the windows again. They wanted to first know what "stats" referred to, but they also wanted to see how they could possibly summon Little Murphey on demand without needing to see a reflection of their right eye.
Thus, they first went over and mentally thought of the contents of the 'STATS' window.
----------------------------------------
???
Age: ???
Gender: ???
Race: ???
Class: N/A
Stage: Yellow Iris 1/1 (LEVEL UP AVAILABLE!)
Field Expansion: N/A
Incarnation: N/A
EXP: 127/120 (LEVEL UP AVAILABLE)
Health: 324/521
Exhaustion (PHYSICAL): 30%
Exhaustion (SOUL): 0%
SDPIFD MATRIX:
Strength: 12/30
Dexterity: 10/30
Perception: 16/30
Intellect: 6/30
Fortitude: 7/30
Divinity: -10/30
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Divinity is negative ten out of thirty? What does that mean?
As soon as Mihe thought that question, just like what happened with 'Course of the Inevitable,' 'Divinity' would expand to describe it.
----------------------------------------
DIVINITY: A measure of how easily accessible a Divinity Field is to one. Positive Divinity indicates access to Divinity Fields, while negative Divinity indicates inability to access said fields.
----------------------------------------
...That didn't clarify anything for Mihe as they put that out of their mind and would put their attention to the "(LEVEL UP AVAILABLE!)" next to the 'Stage' and 'EXP' sections.
As soon as they did, a great pain dashed across their face.