A few days passed, but the turbulence in the market only grew by the hour. My name was making ripples in the market and Libitus even sent me a message that all my coworkers had been talking about it. My bounty even rose to 170 thousand coin, a numerical reflection of my infamy.
Thankfully, everyone in the market was distracted. With me hiding out in my room all the time, they didn’t have the time or patience to try and kill me. That wasn’t even accounting for the proven difficulty of taking my head.
It was January and vacation ended on the 20th. Umara was doing her best but wouldn’t be back for a while, so I had nothing to do and a lot of time to do it.
My primary focus was training. Over the course of a week, I devoted close to 30 hours to tracing paths through my ever-developing advancement formation. My motivation couldn’t be higher, but Psyka was only half the equation now.
Aura was now one of my most important tools, only below summoning, the base of it all.
After my little spat with President Carrion, one of the pieces of information my Spark had processed was the incredible compression my Aura was under. It had tried to uncontrollably rampage with all its power back then, expending a massive amount of my energy in a very short period of time. I had basically been unconsciously trying to kill Carrion with it.
But it had been confined to just beyond my body, despite the level of power exerted.
Carrion’s Aura had been so incredibly dense owing to his Authority that mine, relatively powerful, had been thoroughly suppressed. While it seemed wholly negative at first, I had actually come away with a few positive takeaways.
The result was the experience itself. With just a bit of analysis, I could mimic that feeling and confine my Aura to my body instead of letting it diffuse freely.
It was quite uncomfortable at first, as it had been when Carrion did it. Back then, I felt like I had been blind. Perhaps my spotty vision and blank head had been, in part, caused by the suppression rather than my rampant emotions.
And that blindness was crucial to concealing my Aura. Contrary to the physical eye, blindness in my mystical eye meant invisibility to the Aura of others as well.
Of course, that was a rather oversimplified way of putting it. Plex was testament to just how much more was beyond me, but, without a doubt, this new ability of mine was invaluable.
The only other benefit that could come close in value was how refined my Aura became. Specifically in its form.
Another aspect of my Aura that had changed was its weight. Having been squeezed into a little box, it now spread significantly less even when I wasn’t actively trying to hide it. It was sharper, more consolidated, denser. By default, it still took the form of a cloud or mist, but with a noticeable increase in power.
I didn’t know exactly how much. It had doubled at least, perhaps even more. Aura was less quantifiable than even Psyka, already incredibly vague on exact quantities. I didn’t even know it could be made more powerful this way. Any power differentials I had experience with, I simply chalked up to the gap in Authorities. I had only been honing my technique over what I had; it was like trying to increase a factory’s productivity without even realizing entire portions of the production process could be cut out.
Apocryon showed me what it meant to have control over Aura. Carrion showed me what it meant to have a powerful Aura. They were two sides of the same coin, and both were benefiting me greatly.
In fact, this increased power of mine was the main reason why I could train for much longer. Aura was almost like the energy of my consciousness, but with a denser power, I was not only able to go for longer, but I was also able to exercise much finer control of my Psyka.
Psyka was about complexity, Vigor about intensity, and Mana about feeling. Those were vague descriptions, but there was no doubt that advancing one’s self as a summoner required them to make massive jumps in the complexity of their power. And to make complex things, one needed precise control.
Perhaps this was the main barrier to summoners that blocked many from advancing their power. At some point, the advancement formations would become so complex that their ability to control Psyka simply couldn’t keep up. Practice could help, but Aura was definitely the leading factor in one's ability to get better.
I was sure it was like that for knights and warlocks too. Perhaps to them, it was obvious. But summoners didn’t have an obvious way to integrate their Aura and Psyka. It didn’t help that they were considered useless. It was like a Knight trying to get stronger without knowing that he could project Vigor with a swipe of the finger.
Summoners were still blindly searching through darkness for the right path.
What cruel irony, to see the smartest ones fumbling about to find their way.
Well, at least Maxwell and I were doing things differently now.
…
After Umara returned, we had around two weeks together with no interruptions or work.
The first night when she came back was quite passionate. We hadn’t been apart for so long since we started dating. We both had distractions and work so it wasn’t all that bad, but when we finally reunited, we indulged in each other to more than make up for lost time.
From then on, productivity naturally decreased. We still trained every day, as was standard routine. But generally, we spent our time either in each other’s company at the hotel or going on dates to fun little places around the capital.
However, we also spent quite a bit of time discussing things. The topic was almost always scientific.
Umara wanted to learn everything she could from my knowledge. It helped with her understanding of the world, as was science’s purpose.
But we hadn’t really gone deep into the nature of the universe and its most fundamental principles. These things weren’t concepts that you could discuss once or twice. There were countless rules and principles based upon a fundamental foundation that Umara almost entirely lacked.
She wasn’t to blame, of course. But it meant that she had less of a quantifiable understanding of the world around her than even children did on Earth. And so I had to start with her from the very beginning, which involved me diving into some deep topics that could’ve exposed my otherworldly nature.
The things I knew came from a very different place and they were explained as such. I constantly had to reiterate to her that magic had no hand in anything I talked about. It was difficult for her to detach such an intrinsic part of her life from her understanding, and that was only to grasp some basic scientific concepts. I couldn’t even fathom having to explain something like electrical engineering to her.
Not that it made it unfun. She genuinely had endless curiosity, and I was eager to tell her everything I knew. It made our discussions interesting, and it was especially exciting for both of us when certain things clicked for her.
Umara was definitely smart, and I was glad that she was able to adapt her mindset enough to soak the knowledge up. Those two things would no doubt aid her in the future as she realized her talent.
Our two weeks together were spent like that. Nothing but fun dates, romance, and intellectual discussions.
And so the last day of our vacation arrived.
……
“You say the air around us can become liquid?”
“Yes. The atmosphere around us is composed of a bunch of different elements. And there are how many states of matter?”
“Four. Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.”
“Right. And most elements can go between all those states, even if it's difficult to make them. With extreme temperatures, like extreme cold, you can even make air into a liquid. Why does a gas become a liquid?”
“Because the energy of the atoms is reduced enough for it to condensate. Cool it below its melting point and it will become a solid.”
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“Yes. That’s all you need to really know, but there are some special cases. The melting and boiling points for elements are obviously different. It’s why the air is naturally air while water is naturally water. The planet rests at a constant range of temperatures. If the whole world became significantly hotter, water would evaporate and most life would die. Similarly, if temperatures dropped significantly, water would freeze and throw us into an ice age. But because air remains a gas at this temperature, we’re allowed to exist. However, there are a few elements that are nearly impossible to turn into solids.”
“What gases are those?”
“Helium, for one. Hydrogen too. Not sure about nitrogen, but oxygen can technically become a solid.”
“Hmm…”
Umarra looked down, reading through the periodic table of elements I had drawn up for her. That high school studying was starting to pay off.
That paper was only one of many pages that I had left doodles on. I mainly drew things out for her so she could visualize what I was talking about. It was how many people learned, because sometimes worded descriptions weren’t enough.
She had a whole booklet of these pages by now. That was because, as it turns out, not only did Psyka and Aura make you smarter, but it also made you something of an artist.
The ability to draw the images in one’s head didn’t come easily to most, certainly not me. I was no artist, that’s for sure. But after trying my hand at it, I found that I was far better than I had been previously.
That was the main reason she had so many pages. I got excited and doodled every chance I could to exercise my new artistic skill. The only thing that reduced my image quality was control over my own hand, but with practice and enough time, that would be rectified.
Umara sighed, leaning back and processing the knowledge I gave her.
“You’re really turning my worldview upside down.”
“Well, I suppose I understand that. Everything I’m telling you is normal for me. It’s no different from how you see magic. You simply understand it without thinking. That’s what science is for me.”
“Right. You didn’t have magic where you were from.”
“No, I didn’t. So when I encountered magic, my worldview was flipped, just like yours is now. Even then, what I’m teaching you is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more out there. I get chills just thinking about it, but you won’t understand any of it unless I lay the groundwork for you.”
“...Like what? Give me a hint.”
“Well, alright. Let’s see…”
I compiled my thoughts before speaking.
“The sun in the sky.”
“Yea? You told me it's a big ball of fire really far away.”
“It is. But that fire isn’t actually fire. You see, when atoms get crushed together hard enough, they fuse into one being. That fusion releases a ton of energy, and you know how many atoms are in a small space. That many atoms all fusing together constantly in such a small space would release a huge amount of energy.”
“Yea, it would.”
“Alright. Well, imagine an entire world, like the one we’re on. And imagine if it were all made up of atoms that were all fusing together constantly. It would be a ball of fire that releases an ungodly amount of energy.”
“...Yea.”
“And now, imagine a million worlds worth of atoms, all fusing together and releasing energy.”
“...”
Umara went silent, attempting to comprehend what I was telling her.
Once she nodded slightly, I continued.
“That’s the sun that you see in the sky. A massive ball capable of containing a million worlds, and one that does nothing but explode and release light and heat. That heat is what warms this world. It’s the sole reason we exist. That’s what a star is. And that’s just one. Come here.”
I suddenly grabbed Umara’s hand, pulling her to the huge wall of glass that gave us a beautiful view of the city.
But I didn’t care about the city, I pointed up at the sky.
With no light pollution, one could see the stars in the night sky, so bright and clear.
“You see all those little dots of light? Those are stars and galaxies. And what we see is only a fraction of what exist. Imagine every inch of darkness in that sky containing billions, no, trillions of stars. Many of them are far more massive than the sun we see, thousands if not millions of times bigger. There are literally countless stars. And there are countless worlds, countless moons around those worlds just like our own. All of them are so far away that even given millions of years of flight, we could never reach it. The closest star is no less than trillions of miles away. It’s a scale that humans literally cannot comprehend.”
I let out a breath, staring up at the sky, almost entirely forgetting about Umara in my small moment of existential enamor.
But I had thought about these things no small amount of times before, so I was able to pull myself away and look down at my girlfriend.
She was still staring, silently grasping the enormity of the universe. Even in numbers it was difficult to comprehend the cosmic perspective, but after two weeks of scientific discussion, she was beginning to understand, just enough to abstractly realize its scale.
She was like that for almost a minute before she looked down, spaced out.
“It’s difficult to understand. You kind of lost me with the big numbers, but I feel like I get just how enormous stars are.”
“Heh, that’s good enough. With more time you’ll start to understand more.”
“...I have a question though. How did you, or your people, figure this stuff out? Like the stuff that happens inside of a star to produce the light? It’s so far away and nobody could ever step foot on it. How did they figure it out?”
She asked curiously, finally zoning in and looking at me.
I rubbed my chin with a smile.
“Well you see, it was one of the greatest minds to ever live who paved the way for truly understanding how a star works. Many people tried to propose different theories on how it worked. Some thought it was a massive ball of liquid like lava that was just slowly releasing heat. But one man, named Albert Einstein, came out with perhaps the most important, or at least the most iconic, mathematical model to exist in science.”
I grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote out the mass-energy equivalence.
E=mc²
Short and simple, but those five characters were monumental in the history of science.
“Energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. This laid the groundwork for understanding that the sun has so much material that its own gravity crushes the atoms in its core to the point of fusion. The very same force that pulls us to the ground when we jump also causes the sun’s core to explode with nigh-limitless power. This forms a cycle known as the proton-proton chain, also called the p-p chain.”
“...Heh, pp chain.”
She chuckled a bit, as did I after having intentionally dropped that pun.
“I’m glad that you’re as mature as I am. Anyway, you don’t have to see something personally in order to find out how it works. It took a long time, but we advanced science so much that we could explain things that we couldn’t even see. And we verify its truth with math, which is basically a language in and of itself. ”
“I see…”
She went silent again, taking a few seconds before muttering.
“I guess I really am the lucky one. I have you to give me knowledge that nobody else in the Kingdom knows.”
“Well, it helps you, so I’ll continue to give you knowledge so long as you want it. I want nothing more than for you to grow your own strength. Since my knowledge does that, then I won’t spare the effort to teach you.”
“...Thank you, John.”
Her response was more heartfelt than I expected, surprising me a little.
“Seriously. Not even my mother can understand the things you’re doing for me. I don’t know if you can either. What you’re giving me is priceless. And I know you’re not even doing it because of our relationship.”
“Is that right?”
“Well, you enlightened Shadowbane to Aura despite having come in contact with her for all of two hours. You do it because you’re a good person. Better than anyone else I know. So my thanks comes to you not as your girlfriend, but simply as Umara. I want you to know that my appreciation for you and what you’re doing for me is completely unfiltered.”
“Oh…”
I looked at her, taking a mental step back and reevaluating her.
Not as my girlfriend, but simply as a person, as Umara Talerria.
I turned and faced her, almost erasing my love for her and viewing her in a completely platonic manner.
And I nodded.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad this is able to assist you so much.”
“...Wow. Your demeanor just flipped on its head.”
Umara recoiled a bit, looking at me weirdly for a few seconds before leaning in and nudging me with her shoulder.
“Alright, back to boyfriend-girlfriend mode.”
“Roger Roger.”
I smiled, my love for her crashing back through my mind in full force.
We both instinctively leaned in and kissed, looking into each other’s eyes before she mumbled.
“I love you. Thank you for everything you’re giving me. I wish I could give you something just as valuable in return.”
“Well since you see it that way, I guess you’re in my debt. I’ll have to cash in on that in the future.”
“Yea? What do you want? How much should I prepare to give to you?”
She asked temptingly, causing me to grin as my hands snaked around her waist.
“I think I’ll have to start with your hand.”
“Okay. And then?”
“Then your body.”
“Hm, I’m not sure if I should be excited or nervous. Anything else?”
“And then… your life.”
I spoke while leaning down and kissing her neck.
“I’ll need help raising the kids, after all.”
“H-h-how many?”
“I don’t know. Stronger Authorities make it more difficult, so I think we’ll just have to keep going, and going, and going, until one of us gives first.“
I smiled while kissing her neck repeatedly, causing her to shiver.
Hearing my last words, her deep red face tried its best to give me a confident smirk.
“I think I’ll win that.”
“Oh? Heh, honey please.”
I laughed a bit, giving her cheek a quick squeeze before we dove into another hug.