ILIAS PAYNE

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According to Heloise, I had twenty-two gates throughout my body. That was just under three times as many gates the average person had.

That must be the reason why even though I performed a higher-tier spell, I was able to keep myself conscious while Jaime fainted.

But having more gates wasn’t something to cheer about it. If they were all weak, it wouldn’t matter how many I had. A skilled jynxist with one hardened gate would outmatch me.

The first thing Heloise had me do was strengthen my gates by keeping them in the red zone, which was the equivalent of exercising. While she continued to teach me reading and writing, history, geography, and arithmetic, I was tasked to continuously let mana flow through my gates.

It was like building muscle. You would work out one area and the more intense it was, the better your results were. It was the same exact thing. The more damaged the gates were, the more my body became sore. But when that healed, I found it easier being able to flow mana through my gates for longer periods of time.

Heloise was patient with me.

She was an elf after all.

There were many times when my body couldn’t take the strain and I had to shut off my gates. However, she knew whenever I did this and would calmly ask me to continue letting mana flow.

Many times, the training would be too hard on my body and I would end up bedridden. Mother would freak out and try to heal me but since gates couldn’t be healed, she had no choice but to let my body recover on its own. During these times, Heloise would stay by my side, changing the wet rag on my forehead, reading me stories to keep me entertained, and sometimes helping me eat if my arms were too hurt to move.

One time I got unlucky and came down with a fever simultaneously while my body was recovering from training. The combination of these two took me out of commission for a couple of weeks. I was barely conscious and always slipped in and out of sleep, spending the little time I was awake eating. During these weeks, Heloise slept on the floor in my room. When I had nightmares, it was Heloise who held my hand and reassured me that everything was fine. When I had to go to the privy, she would carry me there to do my business. She could have easily used a Fetish or levitated me in these situations, but she did these tasks by herself.

As emotionless as people might see her as, I realized that Teacher did have a heart and that she truly did care. She just had a hard time showing emotion and understanding it. It was like she wanted to form a bond, but there was something she was bottling up that wouldn’t—no—that prevented her from doing so.

Eventually, the intervals between me being bedridden grew sparse until my body got accustomed and my gates were strong enough to resist a day’s worth of lessons.

When Heloise first started teaching me, I was only able to perform Water Cannon five times. With my gates now reinforced, I was strong enough to easily do it fifty times. I hadn’t learned any new spells since then, but with this part of my training over, I was ready for whatever was next.

After strengthening my gates (which took about a year or so), Heloise began teaching me elemental spells. Since Heloise was a wind mage, she taught an abundance of wind spells—which I became the most familiar with in the four elements. Though I still considered Water Cannon as my main spell.

Once I mastered most of the basic elemental spells, Heloise began teaching me how to control the flow of my mana.

“As I stated, the flow is the same for everyone and there is no way to speed it up. However, you can change the flow by slowing it down or shutting it off completely.” Heloise took off her boots, treading her bare feet on the grass. “Close your eyes.”

I did, even covering them with a hand to make sure I couldn’t see any outlines.

“Your gates are much stronger now so you should be able to sense me.”

I couldn’t see my teacher, but I could feel her flow of mana and read where she was coming from. Which was to my right. We did this a couple of times with her moving around and me pointing in her direction.

“With enough training, you can shut off your gates and conceal your presence. Like this.” Her aura completely disappeared. “Try to guess where I am now.”

As hard as I tried to sense her, I had no idea where she went. I pointed behind me as a wild guess and opened my eyes only to find my teacher hovering above me.

“If you shut off your gates, you can conceal your presence. It makes it easier to move around and makes travel much safer.”

Every piece in my head fell into place. The reason why I was able to sneak up on Salazar and Minerva was because I had no flow of mana they could sense. To them, I must’ve been spawning out of nowhere.

This must also be how Jaime managed to sneak up on me. She was always sneaking around Camaro so she must’ve unconsciously learned how to shut off her gates.

Heloise was a great teacher in jynx, but she struggled with everything else. Her way of teaching history was boring as she read straight from the book word for word. We’d have to solve arithmetic problems together because she forgot how to do some equations. She also got frustrated a lot when I would correct her during my reading and writing lessons.

Every couple of days, since I was still learning the way of the sword with Jaime, I belonged to the colonel from dawn until dusk. While Jaime and I ran laps around the library, Camaro and Heloise would talk before the latter would head back to the house. I think she was asking for advice on how to teach me better because, as time went on, her teachings steadily improved.

When Jaime and I sparred, nine times out of ten, she would beat me. Not because she was better, but because I was forgetting the swordsmanship drilled into me. I was so focused on learning jynx that the talent I had with the sword slowly slipped away.

If this keeps up, Jaime will surpass me.

I was planning on being a swordsman that used jynx, but now I realized why warriors that specialized in more than one class were few and far between.

It wouldn’t matter how much I trained or practiced because if I split my attention between different skills, then I would only be decent at them and never as good if I had focused on one.

In terms of versatility, splitting up your attention would be beneficiary as you would have some basic coverage on everything. But basic was everything you would ever be.

It was like changing wheels on a cart. There were wheels that performed decently in all terrains, but most of the time when people find crashed carts in ditches, the wheels on them were all-purpose. A driver was far better off switching their wheels to match whatever terrain they were travelling on rather than getting one that was a jack of all trades.

A jack of all trades is a master of none after all.

This was the dilemma my mind was currently getting scrambled by.

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While I trained and filled my mind with everything jynx related, I found myself forgetting the swordsmanship I was known by.

I’ve been jynxless for my entire life and I wanted to learn it. I always said I didn’t care and I liked being special, but it was all a lie. Deep down I was jealous of everyone and coveted jynx.

But now that I have the ability to perform it, the swordsmanship skills I had were going to disappear. It was the one thing other than my memories I still retained from my previous life.

Jynx or the sword? I can’t learn them at the same time so I’m going to have to pick one.

The sword was my identity, but it would be boring if I had the same identity twice, wouldn’t it? To ease the turmoil between the two identities that were fighting within me, I made up my mind.

Decan was the swordsman.

Ilias will be the jynxist.

“Colonel,” I said nervously the next time I had lessons with him. “Is it okay if I stopped learning swordsmanship?”

“Huh? What for?”

“You were surprised when you and I had a duel, correct?”

“You had me scared, so yes I was.”

“But you were even more surprised when I performed Water Cannon without it doing any damage to my body.”

“Indeed. If I did that when I was your age, I would’ve been in a coma.”

“I’ve noticed that since I’m learning how to fight with the sword and jynx at the same time, I’ve had a hard time getting used to both. So I thought instead of splitting my attention and resources between the two, I only ought to focus on one.”

“I understand, but you are a rare child. You are smart, mature, understand people, and have talent in both sword and jynx. I see potential and as one of your teachers, I see it as my duty to push you into learning as many skills as possible while still having a childhood.”

My cheeks flushed a brilliant red. “I didn’t know you saw me that way. But I didn’t mean that I wanted to give up on swordsmanship forever. I simply want to set it aside for now and focus on jynx.”

“So you want to learn swordsmanship after you become a jynxist?”

“That’s my intention.”

“I can sympathize with you. I just wanted you and Jaime to learn everything together, but if that’s too much for you and you wish to stick with Heloise, then I respect your choice.”

“Thank you, Colonel. I knew you would understand.”

With permission to halt my sword lessons, Camaro gave me the heavy burden of breaking the news to Jaime.

“But why?” she cried. “Who will I spar with? Ever since you started your jynx lessons, I barely see you. If you don’t come, I won’t get to see you often.”

“What are you talking about? We spend all of our free time together.”

“Yeah, the only things we are taught together are our sword lessons. And who am I going to spar with?”

“First off, you hated me for being the catalyst of the colonel pushing you to learn. Second, you only like sparring with me because you beat me a lot.”

“You’re the one who pulled me into the colonel’s teaching schedule. It’s not fair that you just leave.”

“Let’s put it this way. If I stop studying swordsmanship, I’ll become the jynxist and you’ll become the swordsman. We’ll both be masters of our own distinct classes. And if your dream of us adventuring through Armestis ever falls through, our party will already be diverse. We can even recruit others that have different abilities so we have coverage.”

“Hmm… I see what you mean.” She urged me to leave. “Okay, then, go. Get out of here. Bye-bye!”

What is this sudden change of motives? She only wants me to leave because the colonel will finally stop comparing me to her.

With that out of the way, I spent every minute I had learning jynx.

From time to time, Heloise would perform a spell without speaking the incantation. The challenge we had was still up and I wanted to figure this out by myself.

The only person who I knew was able to perform incantationless jynx was my previous father, King Diablo. But it appeared that other jynxists had figured out his secret.

The first guess I had was that incantation circles were somehow involved. Mother and the colonel used gloves to cast incantationless spells all the time so I assumed it was that. However, Heloise would sometimes cast spells one after another and there was no way she had that many incantation circles on her without moving. I even went as far as spying on her while she took a bath to see if she had tattoos of any incantation circles. However, her bare body didn’t have a single drop of ink—I even got punished by Mother, who caught me peeping through a crack in the bathroom door and promptly gave me a smack on the head.

“Heloise, can I get a hint on how to perform incantationless jynx?” I asked after finishing a day’s worth of lessons.

“I suppose. Actions speak louder than words. Incantationless jynx applies to that as well.”

Actions speak louder than words?

That was a common saying to teach kids why their body language was more important than words.

But how is that a hint for incantationless jynx?

Words were needed to cast a spell, but Heloise showed that the words could be skipped entirely. I’ve got to break this down further.

There were three steps to casting a spell. The incantation, the trigger, then the name. The incantation would gather the needed mana and begin the spell. The name would shape the mana into the needed spell and put it in a state of dormancy. Then the name would activate it.

In the case of Water Cannon, my trigger was me extending my arm or pointing my wand (which was the most common trigger for wand users because of how effortless and convenient it was).

However, triggers were different from person to person as they could choose what trigger to use.

In the case of Fireball, my trigger was the exact same as Water Cannon But for Heloise, her Fireball’s trigger was holding an open hand before manually launching it.

The incantation could also be replaced by using an incantation circle which was the most common way of casting a spell without an incantation.

So there must be a connection between traditional incantations and the circles that mock them. If I could figure out what they had in common, then I should be able to figure out how to perform incantationless jynx.

I have to somehow transform my words into actions. That must be the meaning behind Heloise’s hint.

With the help of Teacher, I fashioned my very own incantation glove for Water Cannon. I used it to see if I could spot the difference between an incantation circle and a normal incantation. Though one required me to speak words and the other didn’t, they both felt pretty much the same. For the next couple of months, I continued to learn arcane spells while trying to figure out how to perform incantationless jynx.

Then one day I came upon a realization: I was looking at the situation from the wrong angle. I was comparing the difference between an incarnation circle and a normal incantation when I should’ve been comparing their similarities.

They had one: It didn’t matter how I cast the spell because the tingling sensation of mana entering through my gates was there for both.

With this discovery, I went through every spell I knew by memory and the ones I had written inside Talking Book.

Though the feelings were similar, each spell would give off a different sensation. It was hard to explain but each spell felt different.

Incantationless spells were harder to perform not because it was hard to learn but because mimicking the sensation was.

I cast aside the glove and held my wand outwards. Heloise, who was sitting on a chair reading, questioned what I was doing, but I ignored her and focused on my trance.

I closed my eyes.

All I have to do is mimic the sensation I get when I cast Water Cannon. The incantations make it easier but if my body is familiar with how a certain spell feels, then I should—

Suddenly a jet of water blasted from my wand, heading directly towards the house. Heloise hopped in the way, summoning Dust Devil to suck up all the water before cancelling the spell, causing a quick rain that drenched the entire property.

“You’ve figured it out.” Heloise took off her robe and hat before drying me off with a wind spell. ”Most people take six years, you did it in just under two. Good job. If this keeps up, you may be able to take the State Jynxist Exam right when you turn twelve.”

“I’m going to have to thank the colonel for letting me withdraw from his sword lessons. If I continued, then I wouldn’t have figured this out.”

My clothes were dry, so Heloise began drying herself and the outer layers she took off.

“Also, Ilias, please refrain from performing destructive spells on the property. Especially ones that are directed towards the house. Mistress Trisha will scold me again.”

“She scolded you for the Shake Foundations spell I messed up?”

Shake Foundations is an earth spell that causes a small earthquake around the caster.

“Yes, she did. You may have performed the spell, but I was looking after you. So any accidents that you cause are entirely my fault.”

“Right. I’ll be careful next time”

“I trust that you won’t be making this mistake again, so I believe there will be no next time,” she said as she graciously put her oversized pointy hat back atop her head. “Anyways, I stick to my promises so that means that, as long as it’s in my power to, I will grant whatever wish you want. So think carefully.”