“What the hell was that?” Elismera screamed at him. Azura didn’t blame her, that had been far more successful than he had hoped. He had wanted to turn the tables, but even he hadn’t expected to be quite that devastating. On the flip side despite his draconic core rapidly replenishing his mana he felt exhausted. The drain on his mana and sheer cost of that skill meant it was something he could use more than once a day, if even that often. Not that there would be a lot of opportunities to use it anyway.
“That was what happens when a blackhole reaches critical mass. Only directed in one direction instead of exploding outward like would probably normally happen.” As simple as it sounded, achieving that result was anything but. Blackholes don't grow over time, in fact normally they shrunk due to the increasing gravity as they became denser. Given how extreme said gravity was, reaching critical mass took far more energy than he had expected, hence why he had to have the others feed it. On top of that controlling it after making it would be impossible from the casters end. Thankfully the enchantment was at the heart of the attack the entire time, but this wasn’t a spell that could be cast normally, that much he was sure of.
“Are you telling me that you just reached the theoretical pinnacle of gravity magic, because you didn’t want to lose an event the school put together?!” Elismera spoke incredulously, having regained her calm. The term pinnacle was a bit misleading in this context. It didn’t mean mastery like it normally would, but rather power. The pinnacle of any given spell type, was the theoretical highest limit it can be pushed to.
“Not exactly, perhaps I’ve found the method for which to form a spell that could reach the pinnacle, but the pinnacle of gravity magic is currently thought to be something that could affect the very fabric of time and space, don’t let that void fool you, in the real world my attack wouldn’t have anywhere near the force required for that. It only does so here because this subspace has a significantly weaker foundation due to its temporary nature.” still it most likely wouldn’t be wrong to say this spell was one of the most devastating spells he had ever seen. He idly wondered if his father would be able to counter it. Almost assuredly, but it would probably at least crack his defense a little, so if nothing else it might hurt the man’s pride.
“Even that is absurd. I couldn’t counter that attack, I’m not even sure Kaiser could counter the attack, what’s a first year doing with power like that?” That was part of why he had decided on enchantment magic in the first place. It was more difficult than standard magic to accomplish most things. Why spend years learning how to make an enchantment that creates a fireball, when you could spend days at most learning how to cast one yourself with a shard. In most regards simple magic was more efficient, but it lost out in versatility. You would have to learn each individual skill separately, and eventually his learning curve for enchantment surpassed that of other students' learning skills individually. From that point on it became easier to develop new enchantments, and from there, research gave birth to a wide variety of powerful spells far beyond his ability.
“Well to be fair this spell isn’t actually useful in most combat situations. It takes far too long to cast, and on top of that, the focus it requires is unbelievable. I have a special trick that allows me to do it, but even with that I’m not able to multitask at all, if someone attacked me I’d be a sitting duck.” In other words against even a semi competent individual using this spell would be a death sentence, and if he was forced to use the spell in the first place then his opponent would be way more than semi competent. “Even aside from that, if I do somehow get the spell off, but my opponents are smart enough not to keep trying to attack it, I’d be hard pressed to supply enough energy on my own.” Not for lack of mana, but simply by virtue of him only being able to use so much mana at once, and just maintaining the spell cost almost all of that.
“I suppose that’s true. In this case the spell was powered by at least 6 people, even if they figured out attacks were worthless fairly quickly. Even still though, that’s quite the ace up your sleeve, Kaiser won’t see it coming.” He smiled awkwardly. There was no way he’d be able to cast it again today. In fact, his usefulness had probably gone down several degrees after merely casting it once. He could afford some damage to his circuits since he could remake his body anyway, but too much might disrupt his body’s formation in the first place, so he was at best at half of the ability he was when he started the fight, and he had a feeling he wouldn’t be fully recovered until he got a good night's sleep.
“Actually, I think we should forfeit if it comes to that fight.” He had nearly forgotten Auros was there. The older student had been quietly staring into the void with a look that mixed shock with concern. “Azura’s good, but there is no way a spell like that didn’t have consequences on his circuits. If he pushes himself now, it may get bad enough that he won’t be able to use magic anymore.” Well that would certainly be true if he was talking about how he was before his trip. No if it was him from back then, his circuits would already be damaged beyond repair. The spell was just that far beyond his level.
“I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s certainly true that I am far from prime condition now. I can still fight, but it will have to be purely support. I doubt I’d have the ability for any offense or defense that’s worth anything at this point.” He was a little concerned for his friends, if they’d had to fight the same enemies they would definitely be injured. He doubted that though, the headmistress seemed to like to test him specifically so hopefully his friends faced lesser enemies.
Elismera grabbed something out of her bag and tossed it to him. It had a gold sheen, but was surprisingly soft when he caught it. He looked down at what appeared to be some form of golden fruit. “Eat that then. It should fix you right up, but I don’t have an unlimited supply of those, so try to be careful in the future.” He stared at the fruit barely even registering her words. It practically radiated a familiar mana. This was a fruit of yggdrasil? When he had seen the tree the fruit had appeared as glowing green balls, he hadn’t seen anything gold in the leaves, but this was unmistakably made from that tree.
“Thank you, but if I may ask just how did you get this.” She couldn’t answer truthfully, not with Auros around, but he hoped she’d at least give him a hint. She did say she didn’t have an unlimited supply, so it was safe to assume the tree didn’t make many at the very least. He took a bite into it curiously, and was practically flooded with a soothing mana. It eased his circuits, and overall made him feel much better. Yet he couldn’t really say it tasted all that great. It was a little too bitter for his tastes.
“Trade secret, unless you want to show me how you did that spell at the end there.” He was tempted honestly, but if the tree only made so many his ability to get them would be practically useless. On the other hand he’d have to teach Elismera for months to get her sufficient enough in gravity magic to even grasp the concept of the spell formula, and then even longer to get good enough at enchantment to put it into practice.
“I like to think I’m a fairly decent teacher, but I’m not good enough to try and teach that to someone with no experience in any of the fields it makes use of.” Elismera smiled and shrugged. It was obvious she had intended to keep it secret from the beginning, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little aggravated. He didn’t like not knowing things, it was his nature.
“Will that one fruit really be enough to recover after a spell like that.” Auros asked. It would, but unfortunately not with 1 bite. He reluctantly looked at the fruit before eating more of it. The life energy in the thing was immense, he wouldn’t be surprised if this fruit was enough to regenerate lost limbs and repair long damaged circuits, it could probably even bring someone back from the brink of death. It felt kind of wasteful to use it on him, if there was anything that would help humans except that the tree wasn’t a means to war, it would be a gift of those fruits, their effects were that miraculous.
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“If it isn’t enough to recover then he is doing a remarkable job of hiding how bad his injuries are.” He laughed, yeah if the fruit didn’t heal him he’d say he looked pretty good for a dead man. Honestly if a dead person was forced to eat the fruit, he wasn't even sure they wouldn’t come back to life. they may not have a soul, so they would just be an empty shell, but they would be alive. In theory anyway.
“Is it something that amazing?” He didn’t know how to answer that, on one hand if anything they were underselling the fruit, but on the other he didn’t know Auros well enough to trust him with something like a hint about the tree. He only even trusted Elismera as much as he did, because him knowing about the tree was pretty much the ultimate leverage. That all being said he had to say something.
“Hard to say for sure given that my injuries were fairly mild, but it certainly felt like it had plenty of energy leftover.” There, that should be a sufficient answer, while still being vague enough not to give any hints as to the fruit's origin. Elismera could come up with the lie of how she actually got the fruit.
“Where did you get something like that?” He glanced at Elismera, but she didn’t look shaken, so he was sure she had an answer in mind.
“None of your business.” He sighed, yup that tracks. Contrary to her graceful appearance, Elismera really did have an aggressive streak. Still given Auros’s nature, he was sure the man would back down.
The older student held his hands up. “I surrender. No need to get aggressive, it was merely a passing curiosity.” He doubted that. A fruit that could heal like that was a pretty amazing thing, and if they existed for anyone to get then even if they were beyond rare there would be a huge market for them. If that was the case She’d have probably just given him something easily worth a million gold, just so he’d be in top form for a school event. In other words there was no way the question wasn’t burning at Auros.
“Well all that aside, how long do you think they are going to leave us in here?” He had assumed they would have been taken out of the extra dimensional space by now, but so far there were no signs of that happening, and no portals had appeared either. Surely it must be known that they had defeated their enemies.
“If I had to guess, I’d say as long as it takes them to safely repair that hole you made. Thanks to you this space is unstable, and if they try anything reckless then we might just end up lost in the void ourselves.” He frowned. Elsimera words made sense, and it burned him that he hadn’t considered that himself. Of course a hole in time space would make the sub-dimension unstable, and the first rule of spatial magic was not to mess with unstable dimensional forces.
“Yeah, that makes sense. I’d say my bad, but we would be in a much worse situation if I hadn’t cast that spell, soooo your welcome.” He didn’t know how bad exactly, but they would definitely be sporting some extra injuries. He looked at his shoulder where the light had pierced him, only to see a circular hole in his clothes with perfectly healed skin underneath. Well maybe not injuries, but damaged clothes at the very least. A brief surge of mana from him kicked the self repairing enchantments into gear sealing the whole almost instantly.
Elismera rolled her eyes. “If we’re going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future, could you at least try not to be insufferable?” Could he? Yes. Would he? Probably not. He smirked at the elf girl, causing her to sigh.
“With the damage to the subspace, it will probably take them at least an hour to get us out of here. Longer if they don’t have any of the specialists that designed the subspaces on hand.” He could probably get them out on his own if push came to shove, but he didn’t know too much about the creation of this subspace, and so ran the risk of destabilizing it further which would almost guarantee their deaths. He couldn’t speak for the others, but he at least didn’t really want to die.
“Oh, guess that means we’ll miss the tournament huh.” He doubted it. While it would make sense for Auros to be correct, he doubted the headmistress had set up a tourney like that for no reason. With that in mind it seemed unlikely that she was going to let them be eliminated before the tourney even started, or at least not because they got stuck, it would be a different story if they had simply lost to their opponents.
***
Azura was starting to get restless. For the first time in a long while he had been proven completely wrong, it had been almost 2 hours, and there were no signs of any outside interference in the subspace they currently resided in. He hadn’t really thought it was likely for the school not to have any of the specialists on hand, but that was the only explanation he could… Oh no, this may actually be really bad. He quickly cast a few spells to try and gauge the properties of the subspace. His glowing symbols floating in the air and spreading across the space quickly fading into the void, and spreading into the strange whirl of colors.
“Looking a little pale their Azura, what’s up?” He wanted to throw up. Auros’ innocent question only further accentuating his panic. This subspace had a different flow of time from the real world, it had probably only been a few minutes over there. Worse that meant it may very well take them days to get out if they simply waited, and that was the best case scenario.
“Well, I just discovered that we’re not getting a rescue anytime soon. In fact, odds are that on the outside they are only just realizing something is wrong with this subspace.” In order to fix the subspace they would need to adjust its timestream, which would be extremely difficult without someone inside coordinating, unfortunately he didn’t have any method of communicating with them so even though he had the necessary knowledge he still lacked the ability to do the part.
“Not a huge deal, I don’t mind waiting a few more hours, it’s kind of relaxing actually.” Elismera frowned in disapproval, but didn’t say anything. She was getting impatient, but she had enough self control not to take it out on them… for now at least.
“Try days, maybe even weeks.” It depended on how competent the people on the other end were, by himself he imagined it would take him over a week to fix the space from the outside, but he hoped that the specialists were much more competent than him in that area. From the inside he could do it much faster, but that put a major risk factor into the mix, and he wasn’t the only one that would be affected.
“Weeks! How does an hour turn into weeks?!” Elismera stared at him incredulously. He understood, his initial estimates would normally be spot on, and it hadn’t even occurred on him to check the time flow. Why would it? It had been normal during their fight, and why would a hole being punched into it mess with the timestream? It just went to show that timespace magic was called one of the most complicated types for a reason… well a reason beyond its difficulty to cast safely.
“Well it turns out the timeflow here is significantly faster here than it is in our regular dimension. I couldn’t give an exact number, but I’d have to guess it's roughly 100 times faster.” He was probably highballing it some, but better to assume the worst, and be pleasantly surprised when things aren’t quite that bad.
“That’s not possible, subspaces are attached to the timestream of the dimension they are linked to, if they differed that much the subspace would surely fall apart.” He gave a shocked look at Elismera. His jaw dropped in surprise. Since when did she know so much about subspaces? Elismera glared at him. “Why are you so surprised, I may not be as obsessed with studying theoretical magic as you are, but I’m far from an idiot.” He shook his head to clear his shock and smiled apologetically at her. She was right, plus she was probably at least a hundred, it wasn’t weird at all that she would have all kinds of knowledge.
“Normally that would be correct, however the reason for that is because normally when a subspace is made it’s made attached to the main dimension with 3 points of contact. It’s linked to the timestream, a physical spot that links the main dimension and the subspace, and the caster. The spells themselves are designed with the thought that the caster would be able to enter the subspace, which means it loses one point of contact normally. In this case the caster is still outside the subspace, so 2 points of contact just the same. That being said, while the subspace is stable enough for now, thanks to my enchantments recreating it as fast as the void can consume it, without the 3rd point of contact it is possible that they will end up destabilizing the subspace in their attempt to get us out.” Frankly he didn’t like their odds.