In the courtyard of the classroom, a spark of electricity crackled in the palm of Shaily’s hand. “There!” she rejoiced.
“Nice. Good progress! The mana structure is still unstable, but the basics are there. I think you are ready to move on to the more… ‘intense’ training method I have devised if you want. I have to warn you, though, it is quite painful.”
Shaily wiped the sweat off of her forehead with the back of her hand. She looked at Sofia, her unsteady gaze betraying her uncertainty. “How much pain are we talking about?” she asked, her voice wavering a little.
“It is quite bad, since it involves a lot of stabbing, but probably not worse than some of the injuries you should have gotten with all the duels you've been doing. I don't even understand how you managed to get so many tokens already,” Sofia told her, thinking back at the ranking scoreboards. Shaily was currently first with a good margin of thirty tokens over the second place. Saria was third, En fourth, Opal seventh, Erian twelfth, and Lola twenty-sixth among all the students. Of Sofia’s class of seven, which now included Topaz and Opal despite their obvious lack of summoning skills, only Topaz and Guerand did not make it to the top fifty. Sofia was quite happy with their performance and was currently in a good mood due to Erian’s return to her class, who had profusely apologized for his uncle’s behavior, despite Sofia’s insistence that she did not care.
“M-Most students are in my level bracket, so it's easier to get a lot of tokens…” Shaily tried to justify herself. Seeing Sofia’s unconvinced expression, she added, “I might be a bit addicted to dueling… It's just so efficient at leveling skills; I have a hard time stopping as long as I don't run out of mana…”
“Hmm. Training is good, but pace yourself a little, alright? You are starting to get some dark circles under your eyes; that is not a good look.”
“I-I’ll try to get more sleep…”
“Please do. Now, Shaily, are you up for the stabbing or not?”
Shaily reeled back. “Is that really necessary?” she asked.
Sofia shrugged. “It is not. But it will make learning the skill much easier, like ‘learn in a few days instead of a few months’ easier.”
“That much?!”
“Yeah. How do you think I learned the summon sprite skill so fast? In terms of creativity, I am not bad, but I am far from a genius; for example, it took me like a full week to learn [Identify] from a scroll, but my friend Alith learned it in something like one day, just based on my description of the mana circuits and a few drawings in the sand.”
Shaily hesitated for a few seconds. She clenched her fists. “Alright, I’ll do it, how does it work exactly?”
“Good,” Sofia approved, then she pointed at the bone sculpture of Angel’s Bolt’s circuits and explained, “It's very simple; I put that thing into your arm, where the mana is supposed to flow, and you use it as a guide to practice the spell.”
“In- Inside… Inside?”
“Yes, inside. As I said, kind of painful, though Angel’s bolt is mostly inside the arm, so it's not too bad; the bones won't be piercing any major organs. And of course, I will summon a healer skeleton, so you don't bleed out. Are you up for it? We can start by a short session; we stop whenever you want, just tell me.”
Shaily listened to Sofia’s explanation, then she frowned. She summoned a light sprite, looking down at her chest, and her frown deepened. She gulped. “Major organs… You- You said you did this for [Call Elemental sprite]?!”
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Sofia removed the last bone thread from Shaily’s arm. “See? It wasn't that bad, and you made good progress! A few more sessions like this, and you will be able to throw bolts just fine!”
Bookie, finish healing her up, please.
Shaliy was shaky, “I… Teacher, I’m… Not so sure I want to ever do this again…”
“Well, it's up to you. If this is too much, you can just do it the regular way; you'll be able to do it before the end of the school year anyway, I'm pretty sure. Or, right, is your reward for putting up with my nonsense, I promised it to you last time, so it's only right that you get it now,” Sofia told Shaily as she presented her with a thin golden ring.
Stolen story; please report.
“Is this… Were you really serious?!” Shaily asked, totally dismissing the lingering pain in her right arm.
“Well yeah. It’s also an apology for getting you involved in my personal business during the school event… I prepared some small things for the other girls too.”
“It wasn’t your fault! Even if it’s really your god attacking you, you couldn’t have known!”
Sofia shook her head, “No, really, I should have known, I put you all in danger so the least I can do is make up for it. I got my avian friend to enchant this, it has a lock and a soul-binding enchantment for double security. You can hide all of your valuable stuff in there and not have to worry about a thing, not even a Dragon could open it if they wanted.” Though they could easily destroy it…
Shaliy had been reaching out for the ring, as if entranced, but she retracted her hand. “How much is it worth?” she asked, stunned and taking a small step back, as if fearing to hear the answer.
“That’s not really important.”
Sofia grabbed Shaily’s hand and slipped the ring into it.
“Go on, wear it,” she encouraged Shaily.
Hands shaking, Shaily held the ring, and slowly slid it on her finger.
“You just need to send some mana toward it and it will be yours, using it should be pretty instinctive. Stop looking and try to open it already,” Sofia told her.
Shaily nodded, and Sofia observed the young girl precisely send a thin stream of mana into the ring. Her expression suddenly changed.
Watching her with a smile, Sofia gestured to Bookie and Pareth, Boys, time to go. As she was about to leave the classroom, she turned back, “Oh, right, I might have left a little something inside. It’s all yours so do whatever you want with it,” Sofia said with a wink to a speechless Shaily. “Just think of it as orphans having each other’s back,” she added and left the room.
Walking down the corridor, Sofia heard the distant, shaky voice of her student.
“Thank you, Sofia!”
Sofia kept walking away, a spring in her steps, she hummed a lighthearted melody.
What a good day.
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Days passed quickly in the academy, when she was not tutoring her students, Sofia spent most of her time either attending Astelia’s classes to learn the classless teleportation skill, or training VPPV. Teleportation without the help of the system was surprisingly hard, but after a month, Sofia had gotten enough of a grasp of it to randomly teleport nearby. Which was useless, but a decent start.
Her speed at converting her blood to light had kept going up until she found a good pace and hit a plateau, still, it was fast enough that by the end of her second month, she had gone from just above a thousand drops changed to light to being more than halfway done.
[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ - Second step of the Light forging realm :
Your blood becomes light (76 524 / 126 441 drops converted)
At this pace she would finish the second step of Light forging before the end of her third month at Brighthall.
During the second month, she was only attacked by students for her tokens once, a group of five had prepared an ambush, which had miserably failed and resulted in a new collection of hands on Sofia’s entrance wall. None of the teachers had lost their tokens so far.
She held her second public class. A lot of new people came, bolstering Sofia’s salary quite a bit as well as her confidence as a public speaker. Neither the Empress nor the Deep creature had shown up this time, which Sofia had found strangely underwhelming. In fact, the Empress hadn’t really shown any sign of life ever since the first public class, and without too much surprise, when Sofia had asked around, nobody except those who had been there for her first class had ever heard of the woman named ‘Elizabeth Fraus’.
At the end of the second month came time for the second event of the token competition. Thanks to Sofia’s reporting of the first event’s attack to the Headmaster, the second event had been changed to be something a bit more secure. First of all, the teachers would work in pairs, and they were also all given communication catalysts which they could break to signal an emergency and allow the higher-level academy officials to teleport directly to them.
For this second event, Sofia was taking care of the exact same group of students as the first time, along with Astelia who also had her own group of five students in her care. Together, they had to help their students clear the first half of a Dungeon before taking over and showing them how they handled the second half with stronger monsters.
Saint Tartaros had brought the entire group with him to the location of the Dungeon in a single teleportation spell, and this time, they had a level 360 Priest of Death in long white robes following them as an escort.
Tartaros closed his eyes and Sofia could feel waves of mana coming from the saint gently washing over her and spreading in every direction.
Opening his eyes, he addressed Sofia and Astelia, “There was no one foolish enough to follow us. I will make sure no one can find this place. As long as you do not leave the dungeon, it should be safe. Do break the catalyst if anything goes wrong. Too many disturbances would be bad for… the competition. May Strength’s blessing be upon you all.”
His speech over, Tartaros disappeared, and the priest of Death took their distance from the group, slowly turning invisible.
Sofia turned to Astelia, “Let’s do this!”
“Let’s get our students plenty of tokens!” the small Vampire cheered back.
[You have entered the dungeon : Forgotten Halls of Mezanthil - Lv. 50-250]
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