Levi was sitting in the library with his two new friends, staring at the beautiful sunset. The group had all shared character logs as a sign of trust and companionship. This had unlocked a hidden objective that Levi produced for all the group. His reward was a familiar essence, a magical cube that had the power of familiar inside it. The cube increased the bond between a familiar and its summoner. Excited Levi used the cube and heard nothing at first.
“Anza,” Levi said out loud. “Did you just speak?”
No, Anza responded. I communicated with you, however. We are telepathically linked now.
“YES!” Levi exclaimed. The two girls looked at each other and then back at Levi. How does this work? Levi asked. Just thinking to you?
Yes, Anza said. As I said, awkward.
“What happened Levi?” Piper asked.
“We can communicate with each other,” Levi replied happily. I know it's only been a few days, but being able to have some sort of communication is going to be great.”
“How did I get this item?” Anna asked.
“Oh, you got the objective too?” Levi asked. “I wonder how that works.”
“Were you only trying to be friends with us to get something?” Anna asked incredulously.
“What? No, it said hidden objective. What do you think hidden means? It also said 3/3. There are only two of you.” Levi responded. He watched as Piper put a calming hand on her friend’s arm. “Hey,” Levi said as he pulled out the star token he had gotten. It was a small medallion with a singular star in the middle. The medallion was golden, and the star was protruding out of the token. “What are these? I mean, I know it’s a star token but are they things I shouldn’t be consuming.”
“You can,” Anna responded. “There are small bonuses provided, they are rare but useful. That is the item that I got from your objective.” She held one up.
“Me too,” Piper said. “Here, take mine.” Piper handed hers to Levi. “They are no good once you are a rank higher, or two ranks in the case of 0-star tokens.” Anna followed her friend’s lead and tossed it to Levi.
“Well, that’s a bummer,” Levi said. “I wonder why it didn’t give you rewards that you can use?”
“It did,” Anna said. She pulled out a book. “Spell Book of Chaos,” she said. “I don’t practice chaos magic, but I am excited to learn.”
“I got kunai knives of water,” Piper said. She pulled out the kunai knives. They were small throwing knives, but instead of the classic dark black, they were clear metal with water trapped inside.
“Oh,” Levi said. “It appears the reward was based on Anza.”
“How do you mean?” Anna asked.
“Anza’s affinity is chaos and water, and those are the two spells I can cast. Orb of Chaos and Orb of water. I also can wield chaos items now, hence this cloak.”
“That’s a cloak of chaos?” Piper asked.
“I guess so,” Levi said; it doesn’t really look chaotic. Anna started thinking about the rewards that were given. Getting a spell book of chaos was a great gift. Chaos spells were some of the hardest spells to master, nearly impossible with a spell book. They were mana-intensive but very powerful. The best way to cast chaos was through wands, staves, or any item that was a magical conduit. Anna had a wand, but it could not cast chaos magic.
“I’ll need a new wand,” Anna said, peering through the book.
“Is chaos magic bad?” Levi asked.
“Not inherently no,” Anna said.
“It takes a strong will to wield it,” Piper said.
“Yes,” Anna said. “Chaos is a hard source of magic because it is unruly, it is unpredictable, but it can be tamed with strong convictions.”
“Interesting,” Levi said. He held out his hand and a dark orb with gray clouds and red lightning appeared in his palm. The orb levitated just above his palm and slowly moved up and down a few centimeters.
“Levi,” Piper said softly. “How can you do that?”
“It was the first, well second spell I could do.”
That is quite impressive, Anza said. You must have an affinity for chaos as well, deep inside your soul.
“Anza said,” Levi told the girls, “That I might have an affinity for chaos?”
“Anza is right,” another voice said. The group screamed and jumped to see Professor Egret standing behind them. They had all been so occupied looking at the orb they hadn’t even noticed her walk in. “Hello Levi, I am glad to see you made friends. Apprentices, I am Professor Egret, here at the Summoners Guild.”
“Professor, what are you doing here?” Levi asked.
“I was eating dinner, and to my surprise, a text box appeared saying hidden objective completed. I received spectacles of chaos as a reward. I then thought well, what other strange thing happened to me today that would warrant such a reward? You Levi. You were easy enough to track with your uncontrolled aura. So here I am.”
“Professor, this is Piper and Anna,” Levi said.
“A pleasure, young ladies. It appears you have gained the ability to communicate with your familiar. Very good. She is quite right, though. Your cloak is a cloak of chaos, and you wield it with such grace that it appears as peace. It is not, though, a simple illusory trick of the trade. Peace does not look like this; it is the opposite of chaos. Chaos has things that are disruptive.”
“Like clouds,” Levi said, the answer dawning on him. He had wondered why his cloak looked so peaceful and not chaotic. The goblin, Hentay, said it would be known as chaos to those who know magic well.
“Exactly, Levi,” she said proudly. “Peace is whatever the person believes is peace without any disruption. Observing your cloak, it is a scene of almost peace, but the clouds disrupt the scene so therefore it is chaos.”
“Does the cloak change per user?” Anna asked.
“It does,” Professor Egret said. “It is a bondable growth item. We will test all your affinities; it is a part of your training. It is useful to know, especially for summoners. It is good to know you can also cast spells. I will inform the other professor of this, and we shall adjust your training accordingly. Levi,” she said with sharpness in her tone. “We saw your workout, and it is clear to us that you are a hard worker. We are going to push you hard, to your limits, then past those. If you fail to reach your potential, it will not be because of us. Enjoy the rest of your night.” With that, Professor Egret left.
“Great,” Levi said, watching the professor leave.
“You are fortunate,” Anna said. “Being the only student means you will grow fast from the extra attention.” She stood up and stretched. “Thank you for the rewards and the friendship. It was a pleasure getting to know you. Your secret is safe with me.”
Piper also standing up, “Yeah, thanks Levi. It was great!” She said with a warm smile. “When do you start lessons?”
“Tomorrow,” Levi said.
“Wonderful, good luck! Let’s meet up tomorrow at some point.” She said, “we’ll just come to your gate. The isolation was nice.”
“Agreed,” Anna said. “Shall we meet for dinner in your cafeteria?”
“I’m down,” Levi said. “Just come through whenever; my last lesson ends a couple of hours before that, around four.”
“Mine as well,” Anna said.
“I’m not done until five thirty,” Piper said. “I’ll meet you here, though.”
“I’ll wait for you,” Anna said to her friend. “Until tomorrow,” the girls gave Levi a hug and walked away.
Levi woke up the next morning excited. He took a nice warm shower, letting the bathroom fill with steam. Fully prepared for the morning, he headed down to the cafeteria to grab some breakfast. Today was the day we were going to learn about magic. He was going to learn what it took to be a summoner and to see if he was cut out for it.
“Welcome in, Mr. Winters,” A deep gravelly voice said. “I am Professor Bertrum. I will be teaching you combat skills, training programs for your physical stats, and recovery techniques.” Professor Bertrum was a large being. He had the face of a falcon with the body of a man with two large eagle wings behind him. He was floating just above the ground as his wings slowly flapped, keeping him afloat. He was as muscular as you could get without looking overly big. He didn’t look like a typical bodybuilder from Earth; his muscles were definitely big, but they were functional. It looked like he trained in heavy lifting and then would go run a marathon. To Levi the two should not be able to take place in the same body.
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His feathers were dark brown, matching his dark complexion. He wore a collared shirt and a nice pair of slacks. Nothing too fancy.
“I don’t know why Professor Egret forces students to wear that awful robe,” he said. “In here take it off and leave it at the door.” Levi did as instructed. “Very well, come with me.” Professor Bertrum flew out the door and toward the gym. He took a seat on top of the squat rack and looked at Levi. “We saw you work out yesterday, so you know something. Why did you do that?”
“I figured if I’m going to be here, I may as well strive for a high star rank. Working out was the obvious choice,” Levi said.
“Good!” Professor Bertrum said. He jumped off the squat rack and landed next to Levi. Professor Bertrum instructed Levi how to use all the different weights in the room. He showed him how to bench press, deadlift, squat, different types of bicep curls, a core workout, lunge, and so much more. Levi went through everything once with minimal weight to get a feel for what proper form felt like. While doing this, Levi learned that his squats were adequate, and he was correct in his assumptions about what was a good pushup and what wasn’t.
“Now that you know the basics, we’re going to test your maximum. This will be your goal to push past every time.” Professor Bertrum instructed.
Levi started with push-ups. He had one minute to do as many as he could. He could rest as long as he wanted, but he had one minute and one minute only. Levi started strong, pushing himself up and letting himself fall in a consistent stream of rhythm. He had busted out 7 in a row with ease, then it started to get hard. By the time the 60 seconds were up, his entire upper body was shaking as he was trying to push himself up one last time.
“Time!” Bertrum said. “15 good ones.” Levi was set to do squat next to give his arms some time to recover. He easily did just the bar. The professor added on twelve kilos each side. Levi did that with ease but not as easy. Next was an additional twelve kilos on each side. Levi dropped down and strained to get himself back up. The professor offered no suggestions, just let him struggle through these reps. The professor added five kilos on each side. Levi lifted the weight then went crashing to the floor. Feeling like a broken pretzel, Levi groaned.
“Maximum is 24 kilos on each side.” There was zero sympathy in the professor's voice. He just watched with observant eyes as Levi crashed to the ground. Levi sat on the ground he wondered why he could understand the metric system when he was raised on the imperial system. Pushing that aside, probably related to his UI, he got up and took the weights off the bar.
“What’s next,” Levi asked, feeling pretty drained.
“Now,” the professor said. “We rest, active recovery. Come with me.” The professor floated to a back room. There was a small pool next to a greenhouse. The room was lit up with magical glass panes that gave the illusion of different weather patterns so whoever was in here could choose the type of environment to recover in. The floor was made of soft rubber, the walls were tiled. The tile was white with black grout, giving the room an appearance of being slightly bigger than what it was. Professor Bertrum adjusted the magical glass to be a snowy day.
“Grab a mat,” he instructed, doing so himself. Placing the mat on the ground, the professor sat down cross-legged. Have a seat in the pool. This is our recovery room. You have access to it the whole time. Use it. The water you are entering is an ice bath.”
“Yep,” Levi said. “I can tell…” for a split second he thought he saw a smile teasing the beak of the falcon man. “Ice baths are helpful for the recovery of the body to shock the system. They are also good for helping you focus on channeling your aura.”
“I don’t even know what my aura is,” Levi said between shivers.
“Aura is the magical energy that surrounds your body. It’s your magical perception. You’re aware of the five senses think of aura as your sixth sense but all five senses combined.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“With proper aura control you’ll be able to feel, smell, taste, see, and hear just not in the way that you think.”
“Please, be more cryptic.”
“If you can properly control your aura, it will act as an extender to your senses. You’ll be able to feel much further, sense things in a different often more detailed way.”
“Okay so how do I control my aura?” Levi asked.
“Notice how your body has adjusted to the cold?”
“Actually, yeah.”
“It takes some getting used to. I like practicing with aura control in a cold environment because our senses of feeling are effectively frozen. We cannot feel our body, so in turn, we can focus more on our aura. Here is the progression, once you have great aura control in the ice bath, then you do it here on this mat, then in the steam box. You do not progress until you pass the aura test that I have set up.
Now, to feel your aura. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Focus on the energy of your body. Do you feel it? Do you feel how there is something just above your skin?”
Levi closed his eyes and attempted to do as instructed. He steadied his breath and closed his eyes, images of all the things he did wrong flooded his mind. It was the first time he had a moment of pure quiet. It was chaos. Chaos inside his mind took over all the concentration he had been working so hard to build. A thought, a beacon, appeared amidst the chaos. It was Anza saying he might have an affinity to chaos. In that moment Levi focused on that thought, the thought that he had some sort of connection to chaos. That maybe perhaps the chaos inside of him could give him the key to understanding and working with chaos.
Chaos by nature could not be controlled. It was not a pet to be trained. It was a being to be bargained with and partnered with. It was a give-and-take relationship. To Levi, he would give some frustration, anger, and grief. He would feed the chaos, guilt, pain, and disgust. It craved these emotions, these emotions that were seen as negative, but Levi knew better. Emotions weren’t bad or good; they were just emotions. Chaos was the same. It was neither bad nor good; it was what it was.
Levi had a lot of frustration and anger to give in this moment. He was so angry with the world he left. The world that took his dad from him far too soon. Levi hadn’t known he had been harboring such powerful feelings of anger for so long. He must have pushed them down until he had forgotten about it. In return for feeding the chaos, the chaos would give him advice. It would give him power. Levi used the power given to control the thoughts to think of his body and feel what he was meant to be feeling.
With another round of concentration behind a deep breath, Levi discovered his aura. It felt like a small magnetic field hovering over his skin in a rather uncontrolled manner. It would fire out of each exit point before calming down. Levi imagined that if he were to see his aura for real, it would look like pistons releasing small spouts of energy over his skin in a strange, haphazard rhythm.
Professor Bertrum watched with eager anticipation. He had been a professor for a long time and had seen many students. Those numbers had dropped significantly in the last decade or so but when he got a promising student such as Levi, he got excited. He watched as Levi’s aura spiked and was thrashing around. The professor understood this to be the rush of emotions taking the forefront of an uncalm mind. Bertrum stood still and watched as his student slowly worked it out on his own.
His comrade, Professor Egret had warned Bertrum that Levi might have an affinity for chaos magic, which is good. Chaos magic is feared by so much of the world, but it is not more harmful than air or fire magic. If Levi could learn to work with Chaos magic and not try to control it, then he would truly be a remarkable summoner. Any summoner who had any type of affinity was one who thrived. Usually, that affinity allowed the summoner to cast spells of that specific type.
Returning to Levi he watched as the aura retracted back to its uncontrolled state. Levi had started sweating, even when in the ice bath.
“Alright,” Professor Bertrum said. “You need to rest, come out and I’ll teach you how to use your mana to recover and, in some cases, heal slightly.”
Levi got out of the pool and sat next to the professor on his own mat. He mirrored the sitting position that his professor had dawned. With his legs crossed and sitting upright, he focused on breathing like had done in yoga for so many years. This was easy, he could feel his mana inside of him. It would coarse through his being. If his aura was the outside energy being poured out of his insides, then mana was the source of that energy. Mana ran through his body like blood ran through his veins. He could feel the mana pathways.
Guiding the mana into many different places in his body where he felt like they needed the most help. His chest, his legs, and his hands all received the subtle recovery help from the mana.
“Excellent,” Professor Bertrum said. “You got that down instantly. To recover your mana is a much similar process. Do you feel in your body somewhere a deep pool of mana?”
“I did yoga, a form of meditation, while doing stretches back home; this is very similar. I do, it’s in-”
“Don’t tell me,” Professor Bertrum warned. “Don’t tell anyone. Your mana pool is more important than your heart. As you get stronger and you rank up, your heart becomes less critical. All your organs do. The mana you feel will grow more and start to take over the organs to make them more efficient and magical. At 2-star your heart will have some arteries that are completely taken over by mana pathways. At 3-star a valve, at 4-star your entire heart, and at 5-star… well we’re not really sure. Anyways the mana pool is like your new heart, it is the source to your life force.
Keeping the location is important to keep close to your chest. The more you train and add to wisdom the larger your pool becomes. Here’s a secret that most don’t know. In order to have the biggest maximum pool of mana, you have to be able to train your wisdom first before you train the others. If wisdom comes after vitality or any of the other attributes it has a harder time creating its pathways in the newly fortified body. Do you understand?”
“I do. Why aren’t there more summoners if that’s the case?” Levi asked.
“Because summoning is a slow progression of the wisdom attribute. Are you away how to train them?”
“Yes, by completing a summon.” Levi responded.
“Exactly,” Professor Bertrum said. “Summoning is a laborious class and takes some extensive materials. And often times leads you without protection, but that’s why we have to train harder your physical attributes.”
“Wouldn’t that mean the vitality of summoners should be high too? Because if there is no defenses, like shields or mana bubbles, there is more need to dodge and get away.”
“Very astute. There are rituals to summon shields and defenders. That you will learn, that will also help your vitality. The road to becoming a higher star summoner is daunting, but I can assure you, IF you make it to the peak, you’ll be stronger than your counterparts from a different class.”
“Are people that afraid of hard work?” Levi asked. He frowned. “Look who’s talking," he said. "I spent my whole life in my other world doing the bare minimum and just being average. I never pushed myself; I just sat and accepted the fact that I was okay with being average.” He admonished himself.
Professor Bertrum looked at him with assessing eyes.
“What?” Levi asked.
“I’ve never met someone who openly admits that they took the easy route. Now that you have observed it and you have the rare opportunity that most don’t get, what are you going to do?”
“I was chosen to come here, not choose it,” Levi replied.
“That is not what I am talking about,” Professor Bertrum waved a dismissive hand. “A second chance at life. Most don’t get that. But you do. So, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to sit back and continue to be average? Or are you going to step up and live the life you never ever could have dreamed about.” Levi went to speak and answer but the professor waved another dismissive hand. “Don’t answer it now, think about it. Truly think about it, this is your path and one that should not be taken lightly.”
The professor stood up and started floating once again. He picked and rolled up his mat. “Let’s go eat.”