After chatting for twenty minutes with Shaily and learning that she was also an orphan but had inherited a small city house and enough savings to survive by herself for a few years, the teacher who had been using the Visualizer left with a small group of level 200+ students of all ages in tow.
That’s… a Goblin?
[Supporter - Lv. 300+]
I don’t remember this teacher from the opening ceremony… Then again I was busy staring at my ancestor. And I completely forgot to tell Saria about it.
Sofia and Shaily entered the Visualizer. After the short entrance corridor was a single huge spherical room with a flying platform in the center on which a pedestal held a polished black ball. The walls of the room itself were not simple, they reminded Sofia of the ranking Spire’s inner core Sen had brought her to.
A technology from the system?
Sofia pressed the button on her right labeled ‘bridge’ and a bridge of solid mana appeared in the air, linking the corridor and the levitating platform. Walking on the bridge, Sofia asked Shaily, “Do you know which teacher that was?”
“The hobgoblin who just left? That’s teacher Akan, he’s well known for his fiery temper, he teaches transformation spells I think. I saw him transform into a giant Roc and fly away once.”
“Like the monster Rocs? Sounds like a lot of trouble just for the ability to fly.”
“You can fly too, right, teacher Vakaria? How does it feel?”
“You can just call me Sofia when we’re not in class or around other teachers. Flying is great. It’s hard to explain how it feels really, in terms of enjoyment it’d put it up there with summoning an army of skeletons.”
“That…”
“Don’t get stuck on the details, anyway, we’re here, any idea how this thing works?”
“I think you’re supposed to put your hand on the black crystal and activate the skill as you would…” Shaily tried, uncertain of her explanation.
“Let’s try that with a harmless skill first, then.”
A retract bridge button? Alright.
Damn this ball is cold.
Does this only work on active skills? Activating the skill sounds wrong, maybe trying to focus and visualize the mana patterns makes more sense considering the facility’s name.
Thinking this, Sofia closed her eyes, and focused on what was by far her simplest magic, the spell version of [Heal Undead] which did nothing but create ‘holy’ light.
“It works!” Shaily excitedly exclaimed.
Sofia opened her eyes. In the air around the platform, thin curved beams of blue and red light showed a three dimensional map of the mana pathways used to cast the spell. The blue beams of light were inside of a very faint human silhouette, showing the pathway locations inside the body.
Although it was Sofia’s simplest spell, it was already quite complex, hundreds of light beams curving and crossing in every direction. Three parts of the blue lights were constantly shifting between different forms, which Sofia recognized were meant to control the direction, starting position and intensity of the light.
“It’s strange to see one of my spells like that. Can I turn it around somehow?”
Fiddling with the black crystal ball, Sofia found a way to move and turn the light blueprint, as well as zoom in and out, and even to highlight specific parts of the spell by focusing on them in particular. The ball was sucking mana out of Sofia’s hand, and the expenditure was right about what the clerk had told her, a bit under ninety mana per second.
This is crazy good. It’s great for teaching but that’s incredible to help transition skills to spells or to understand how to alter them!
“What skill is that?” Shaily asked.
“That’s my most simple spell. It just makes light. Let me show you my most complex spell, then we can get started with the lightning bolt.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Your most complex spell?! Is it what summons an army of skeletons?”
Sofia laughed awkwardly. “It’s not… It’s a secret, alright? Let’s just have a look for fun,” she answered before focusing on the mana patterns of [Summon Blood].
The human silhouette grew and grew until only the head fit inside the room, inside it, complex structures of millions of tightly interwoven mana pathways appeared one after the other in quick succession until the entire room was almost filled with undecipherable bright beams of light. Then suddenly the entire room lit up in bright red along with a shrill sound, and all the lights disappeared, leaving Sofia and Shaily in complete darkness.
“T- Teacher?”
Sofia summoned a faint pillar of holy light above them. “I think I broke it.”
“Are we in trouble?”
“If someone is, that will be just me, don’t worry about it.”
The door opened and the clerk student came running through the corridor, barely stopping himself from falling inside of the spherical room. “Is everything alright?” he called out, worried panic in his voice.
“We’re fine!” Sofia shouted back, “I’m not sure about the room though.”
“Thank god!” the student answered, “This should be alright, this always happens when you try to visualize a specialized skill, I forgot to warn you!“
Ahah, right, a specialized skill…
The student profusely apologized for his mistake while he fiddled with a hidden panel in the wall near the bridge button. After twenty very long seconds, the lights finally came back on.
Alright. No [Summon Blood]. Lesson learned. I should have known when it only showed the head. That couldn’t have been more than five percent of the whole thing.
I don’t even understand how the skill can cost so little mana and still…
“So, the piercing bolt… There it is. What do you think, Shaily?”
“It’s, uh, much simpler than the one before, but… I don’t think I can learn that in four hours…”
“I would be shocked if you could. The actual act of casting it is much simpler than it looks, though. Give me a few minutes to create a bone replica of this thing and then you can study that. It sure is a lot easier to understand what’s going on when you see it like that.”
“Do you need to visualize all that every time you use the spell?”
“No, since I had the skill, it’s instinctive for the most part, the system helped with that. But learning spells the regular way shouldn’t be too hard, even though I’ve never really done it from start to finish… Actually, how about this, I will get you a storage item, yo-”
“What? No, no no. I can never pay for it,” Shaily vehemently protested.
“Let me finish. I’ll get you a storage item. Not a huge one but enough to store a dead monster or two.”
“That’s already huge!” Shaily almost shouted, taking a step back inadvertently and hitting the railings of the platform.
Sofia rolled her eyes. “A single one, then, anyway, that will pay for the dead monsters I took, and you will also have to give me the skeletons of all the monsters you hunt this year. Meanwhile we trade skill for skill. Just give me any of your class skills, learning one myself will let me teach you better, I believe. Do you agree?”
“W- The- Aren’t you trading a storage item for my skill then?! I’d trade all my skills for a storage item large enough to fit a whole monster!” Shaily exclaimed, each word louder than the last, “Of course I agree, I agree every day of every-...” Shaily forced herself to shut up, she gulped and with a calm voice, she apologized for her outburst. After a second of reflexion, she added, her voice now becoming quieter the more she spoke, “Why are you so generous? Why me? It’s a bit worrying. I can never pay you back. Even the skill you accepted to teach me is probably worth more than a storage item, I saw how it blew straight through a high-level student’s defenses, and that was with you only channeling it for a second…”
Sofia just waited for Shaily to stop talking. “Are you done?” she asked after a short silence.
“Yes…”
“Took you long enough,” Sofia answered with a smirk. “It’s not about you in particular, and I don’t specially expect you to pay me back. As I see it, I’m just doing my best to help you as your teacher, and if your teacher is the one asking you for favors like a bunch of nice skeletons, isn’t it logical that they should repay you?”
“Y- You could pay any adventurer to get those skeletons for you…”
Sofia shrugged. “I could, but I also don’t care that much. I could go hunt them myself if I really needed, collecting more is like a hobby at this point. If you want the true – true reason why I’m helping you… You’re polite, serious, a hard worker trying your best despite your shitty circumstances, willing to chase even a faint opportunity when you see one; in short, I think you deserve it, and I can afford it, so yeah. Of course I’m losing money if I buy you a storage item, probably several months of my teacher salary. But so what? Money exists to be spent. Several strong people have helped me get where I am, why should you not get some too?”
“B- But what, what if I’m a liar? If it’s just a front? You’ve only known me for one day, how could you possibly…”
Sofia crouched to be on eye level with the much shorter young woman, “Are you a liar, Shaily?”
Words were stuck in Shaily’s throat. Sofia smiled softly, she sighed. “You know what, Shaily, you can prove yourself for certain. Just complete after me… ‘There is no adult left willing to be your guardian-”
All kinds of emotions had crossed Shaily’s face in the last hour, she was a very expressive girl, wearing her heart on her sleeve. But as Sofia spoke, for the first time, tears welled up in Shaily’s eyes. With a trembling voice, she finished the sentence she knew all too well.
“Your class has been changed to ‘Orphan’. We are sincerely sorry.”
----------------------------------------