Aeris was thinking for a moment before shrugging.
“I don’t know, I haven’t tried. When I... went there... I was able to come back but I don’t know if that’s because of the gate or not.”
It was clearly a touchy subject for her, which was understandable given the event she went through. To be honest it’s even weird that she’s able to be this fine near Petal, given that she was the one carrying her at the time.
It was also kind of interesting how Petal ended up as a prisoner of war and due to certain events was now Gilliam’s companion.
“That’s fine, I can ask your teacher tomorrow.” He smiled, wanting to change the subject so he didn’t pull on the wrong strings with the poor girl.
“For now, I think we’ll head to bed.” Gilliam smiled at the group. It was getting somewhat late and though the Dome had kept everyone relatively fresh and good on stamina, once they left it some of the exhaustion came back, stuff like muscle soreness was oddly present after leaving, even though the muscles should have been healed when inside.
In either case, there was a lot to do tomorrow as well, so no need to forgo sleep. And based on Petal’s expression once heading to bed was mentioned, there were other plans involved there as well. Not that Gilliam minded, but he really wanted them to bond in other ways as well. He thought about it for a moment on the way back to his room after the group had split up for the night; he should take her travelling or something interesting with just the two of them. They might be training the coming time but it was important to get some calm moments as well.
Turning in for the night the morning bell rang soon enough, though he wasn’t getting a full heart attack everytime like before, it was still startling enough that he hated it and wanted to seriously harm that bell.
The morning routine was the same as it had been every day so far, ending with breakfast being eaten and making plans for the day with Angela. Today was no different but was more focused on Savia and her teacher. Savia needed to get better, to the point that she could properly teleport people, once that was stable they needed to find out her limits and work on that. Good thing was that this could be done on the side of other things. Gilliam really wanted to be a part of it but it was better if it was handled by professionals like the academy’s teacher and the prodigy that was Aeris.
After breakfast was done, and the plans for who would do what, the group split up accordingly. Angela and Petal would be fighting, preferably with Kintas or Ghaos, and Gilliam would go with Savia and Aeris to their teacher.
“I could teleport us there.” Aeris smiled widely as she suggested teleporting to the teacher rather than walking.
Though Gilliam enjoyed efficiency this felt a bit over the top.
She continued with an explanation in the same sentence. “The more Savia teleports the better it will be for her, it helps her develop. It will also help you as teleportation, especially if you do it a lot, has a very unique drain on the body.”
She held out both her hands, one towards Savia and the other towards Gilliam.
He realised that he didn’t really know too much about the subject, but he did know that teleportation could make you feel weird, and if the expert said so then it had to have some merit to it.
Savia had already flown and landed in the hand offered to her, Gilliam gave a mana crystal to Angela for the Dome before he grabbed hold of Aeris’ offered hand. A very short buildup of energy and blinding light later he found himself in a classroom. It was not as big as the others he saw more of before, comfortably only about five or six students could be in here with the teacher. In the chair behind the desk was a middle aged woman. She had shoulder long black hair, wore a black robe and was sporting a stern resting-bitchface-like expression. Her badge had the familiar white disc and only the yellow triangle colored in, marking her as an Aether mage.
“Ah, Aeris and Savia. I see you brought someone today.” She sounded oddly nice and pleasant, not what you’d expect from her expression at all.
Savia chirped up right away. “Angrylady, this is Master!” She pointed excitedly at Gilliam who was doing his best to hide his sudden surprise at how she was referring to her teacher.
Luckily she just chuckled, Gilliam took this as she was fine with the reference.
“Are you here for training as well, will you just be observing today?” She seemed honestly wondering about this but at the same time didn’t seem to have a problem with him being there, probably not the first time someone wanted this.
“No, not today. But I have some questions about teleportation for you, if you’re fine with me asking.” Gilliam wanted to make sure she was fine with answering things, not all teachers might like him butting into their teaching time, like he technically was at the moment.
“No problem, ask away.” Her tone seemed pleasant and nice, her face told him otherwise.
It seemed this school had weird teachers all around...
“Can a teleporter go to other worlds if he has the coordinates for a place there?” Dropping the main question right away seemed like the best way to go.
“The short answer is no. Portals can, but teleporting cannot.” She sat back in her chair, using her hands to emphasise further explanation.
“Teleporting needs what we call Line of Effect, this means that you need to be able to make a magical connection between two points. This magic can ignore most solid objects and even many kinds of magic, but not everything. This is why you can set up a specific barrier around something and block teleporting into it.”
Using her hands she hinted of something crashing into her other hand like if it was a wall. “However, if there is something as simple as a pipe or tube through the protection, the magic can find a way to connect and teleportation works.”
She put her finger between the fingers of her ‘wall’ to show it going through.
“We have tried going to other worlds before, we don’t know if it’s because of bad coordinates, the dome around Lisica or just that there is no Line of Effect between worlds, but it’s not possible based on how we understand it now.”
Gilliam was a bit let down at that, he really hoped that it could work.
“What about portals?” She did mention that it could. He didn’t know much about teleportation and even less about portals.
“Portals just need a coordinate, where teleportation needs line of effect, portals just need a point. Teleportation is actually just very, very fast movement between two points, portals connect two locations together. Imagine if you magically cut a coin down the thin side and move the parts to different locations. Though weird this would now mean that the two sides of the same coin are in very different locations. In a sense this means that both sides of the coin, or portal, are technically connected at the same point.” She tried aiding this explanation with her hands, putting them together and splitting the connection to emphasise the coin.
“It’s less of stretching a tunnel between two points, as it is connecting the two points as one.”
Gilliam had a dumb little epiphany moment. All the sci-fi media was correct about wormholes...
“So... it’s like this...” Taking a page out of his notebook he did the standard wormhole explanation by folding the page and shoving a pen through it.
“It’s bending the space to the point that two points are the same, then punching through it. It’s not travelling but more like stepping through the bent space?”
He wanted to test the theory that much smarter people than himself had made up in his world.
Her eyes widened. “That... Is a very good explanation, I’m stealing that. But yes, that is exactly it. But mages who can use portals are very far between.” She put a hard emphasis on the word ‘very’.
“You wouldn’t happen to know any portal mages... do you?” There was a hope in Gilliam’s voice, if there was a portal mage available this would make everything not only safer, but potentially much more effective. Getting there with their own portal would not only make the trip safer, as they wouldn’t step into a group of demons, but could also land them there secretly.
“I do, a student of mine. She figured out the weirdest way to take advantage of her portals... But yes, I’m sure she could aid. She became really proficient in the end so if anyone can do it, I’m sure she can.” There was a sense of pride in her voice, she clearly took pleasure in teaching. Which was a very good thing in Gilliam’s mind, it let him not only feel reassured in regards to Savia, but also that this portal student of hers might be able to do this.
“How do we get hold of her?” Gilliam wanted to speak to her as soon as possible. There was also the question about possible payment, he kept forgetting that he was actually pseudo rich already and not exactly having problems getting funding.
He also did have a vague memory of Alleyan saying that he wanted to help with anything he could.
“I believe she went home to Aestu to start a transport company, I believe she’s doing quite well for herself.” Irila commented.
Something that really made sense, if you could open portals to anywhere in the world, it would be an amazing thing for merchants and the flow of things. Travel the world once to get to know the major areas and you’re set for life, have people schedule your time and you most likely have work forever.
Given that shipping probably still used ships, this would move travel time from... months? Gilliam had no idea of the scale of things but whatever time it took was now considered instantaneous, you don’t get faster than zero time.
“You think she’s likely to help? I mean, I think I should be able to pay her if needed.” Gilliam mentally probed his ring to get a feel for the things in there. He still had this thousand gold if needed, but he could also make more mana crystals if needed.
“Worst case scenario, she’ll help if she feels comfortable with the reasoning, and if the reward is good enough. I have seen her help for free if she believes in the cause but I’m not sure that’ll happen with this. I suspect that this will use a tremendous amount of mana, so you will either have to supply her with yours, or have a solid stock of mana crystals.” Nodding to herself, almost as if agreeing on the statement that she was checking with herself to be true.
“Well, all of that is fine.” Gilliam started, he didn’t like the idea of using his own mana for this as he felt he should be in top shape at the time they went through the gate. However, stocking up on a bunch of mana crystals is fine. “I’ll just stock up on mana crystals. But, should we go now or...?”
Not really knowing if it was best to go right away, plan this and come back when ready, or go when everything is prepared and sort of surprise her. The latter had the potential of backfiring if she said no, but the former could at least let them know right away and plan accordingly.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“I think we should go talk to her as soon as possible-” Irila replied without getting up from her chair. “-it wouldn’t be fun if you used days to prepare only to get a No, before having to plan again...We can go find her after today’s classes are over. Going to her all too early or during her normal workday might not be the best.”
Gilliam nodded in agreement. “I suppose I’ll go get murdered by Kintas for a few hours, then.” He didn’t sound too happy about it, but at the same time it was the best combat training he could consider. It let him try out new things in combat as well as get very, very used to pain.
“Good luck with that.” The teacher had a sarcastic smile on her lips. “We’ll continue with teleportation.”
Gilliam briefly wondered if he should just join them for teleportation training, if he could also learn to teleport that would make things even better. Parts of him wondered if Savia might feel that he’s taking her value away, but wouldn’t it be better to have more possibilities for teleportation when time came?
Considering this briefly he came to the conclusion that since Savia was making such speedy progress, perhaps he could try to use her as a combat transport as well, if so he wouldn’t have to consider teleportation himself. So for now he needed more combat training. If they managed to get to the lord demon himself then that would be more important.
There were more layers to the considerations but Gilliam ended up realising that he was overthinking things, for now he needed to focus on the low hanging fruits, the easy actions to get the best results. If there was time later he could indulge in other things.
Ending the conversation with Irila, and telling Savia to come find him at the dome when they were done, he left the classroom for now. Since Petal and Angela planned to fight Kintas, it was easier to have them find him there than them deciding on another meeting spot, as you tended to lose track of time in the dome.
Walking through the hallway he felt stared at, every student he passed gave him weird glances, or did their best to not stare which in itself ended up looking noticeable, or smaller groups were speaking amongst themselves in hushed whispers after he passed them.
It felt oddly negative. On one side he really didn’t care, let the kids do what they want, but on the other side this felt oddly depressing. He didn’t really know how society worked in this world if they acted like this because they feared him, because they were star struck, perhaps something as weird as the ‘everyone is equal’ rules at the academy made all of this feel weird? Or perhaps it’s just something as dumb as him being twice their age?
He really didn’t know, and though he decided to not dwell about it, it didn’t exactly feel right.
Changing his target he decided to head back to his room instead, there was something he wanted to do and test out, so today felt like a good time to do just that.
This was not a super hard, but rather very detail oriented and finicky process. Once he got to his room he wanted to fill another spell slot of the coat.
Taking out his notebook he started drawing the Summoning Spell, or Creation spell as it was actually called. It was tied to his mental image for the sake of creating, which meant it was stupidly versatile. He could look into expanding on it later but Nolis knew what he was doing, and since Gilliam could easily cut the link to whatever he had summoned with a thought, it was not too dangerous as long as he was smart with it.
Like the Star Lance, he made extra, double, triple and quadruple certain that the spell circle was correct. Since this spell connected to his lifeforce, and not just his mana, he... really didn’t want it failing.
He didn’t really know how much time passed, but eventually he was satisfied with the, frankly evil-looking spell circle in the air. Passing it into the spell pocket it disappeared and pinged itself as successful.
Not wanting to gamble on this working properly without testing it, he let it connect to him as he mentally imagined a normal butterfly that had a two minute lifespan. Activating the process had the spell circle barely blink itself in existence before opening a light cut on his arm, it was not more than a simple cut that would probably close itself in a minute. The familiar mist puffed out of the wound and disappeared instantly, much faster than when Nolis showed him before. And as the spell completed a simple butterfly with a blue wing pattern started flying around in the room. Since Gilliam had the mental image of a normal butterfly, it seemed to take his concept of normal and had it be incredibly harmless.
As expected, about two minutes later it disintegrated into particles of red mist and disappeared.
This was a resounding success!
Not wasting time, he decided to just put the rest of his things in the ring, mainly his notebook and writing utensils. Then make his way to the girls.
Exiting his room he took the shortest path, down the hallway, through the large hall and into the Light Field. The dome was active and there was fighting inside it. They had not really been on their own that long yet but Kintas seemed eager for some more engaged fighting, so odds were that they didn’t have a problem persuading him.
Rather than going in and changing the power balance and getting owned by Kintas again and again, he decided to just observe for now. Though their fighting as a group needed a lot of refining, odds were that they would be fighting together as Gilliam would bombard everything he could see, if it turned out like that the girls needed this more than he did.
Though, as he got properly close he saw that his fears weren’t needed, Angela and Petal fought very well together, much better than when Gilliam was involved. They had found a synergetic timing working where they changed between offence and defence between them. This let Angela handle focusing on the weapon which let Petal focus more on attacking, or the other way around. Though it didn’t always work and Kintas seemed to generally have the upper hand, they got through to him more often than Gilliam expected.
He also released a few things. First, seeing them die felt wrong even though they were in the safety of the dome, but the more impressive thing was their damage output. Petal’s claws had stronger cutting power than they should have, though not that long they managed to leave extremely deep gashes, or even cut limbs off... The few times they connected. When used right it seemed she could even block Kintas’ sword at times. Angela didn’t have the same cutting power but when she landed her punches or kicks, the sound of breaking bone could be heard outside of the dome, she had improved somehow.
Gilliam intended to use this time to generate more Mana crystals, but alongside the other students he was entranced by the fighting happening in the dome. Sure, it was not as flashy or explosive as if he had been part of it himself, but it was amazing to see how much they had improved. Kintas was still a monster and it was possible to see that he was still holding back, but he was holding back less than before.
After a while of watching he snapped out of his original trance, it was still interesting to see but he had enough focus to spare compared to before. Letting them fight he used that downtime to make more of the mana crystals.
He kept making them the same size as before, something that seemed to make students around him either terrified or amazed, ignoring them he continued doing his thing. Once a crystal was complete he just put it in the ring, and started on another one. For future versatility he made sure to make them of different elements.
Having done this a short while he realised that he could now make a fourth crystal before he felt like stopping. This kind of caught him off guard as his maximum before was three before stopping. Given the amount of mana in these gems it would seem that he had improved again! This brought him immense joy, to the point that he got a slight adrenal spike, causing some focus problems when making the next crystal.
In the downtime between making large crystals he made some small darts. They were about 10cm long (~4inch) and about 1cm thick (~0.4inch), though he didn’t make proper fletching he added some very small fins on the non-pointy side, he took care to barely curve them slightly, these would be going incredibly fast but the rotation should aid stabilisation through rotation. These were faster to make but based on the marble testing earlier they should be somewhat devastating when shot with Telekinesis.
If he took it slow he could just continue making these without the need to stop, meaning that his Core recharged his Boundary about the same speed.
Though he wanted more of everything he decided to take breaks in between, it would be better for him to make the larger ones for Aether, especially if the portal mage needed them. However he did manage to generate eight Aether Crystal darts in addition to the four different element spheres. He felt, surprisingly fine, all things considered.
After some time just staring it seems that Petal noticed Gilliam through the dome, she said something that stopped the fight and Gilliam was waved over.
Not minding being a part of this he happily entered the dome, Petal walked over to him and greeted him with a smile and tattered clothing. Having another proper look at the group they all had pretty bad clothing at the moment.
“Your companion here has gotten dangerous.” Kintas commented shortly after Gilliam and Petal shared a smile. “No idea what you did but keep doing it.” He smiled, complimenting her progress.
Angela seemed to take this as her queue and walked closer to him, whispering something to Kintas which had him smile incredibly wide and suggestively.
“Oh yes, absolutely keep doing what you’re doing.” He smiled, putting heavy emphasis on ‘absolutely’.
Again, in the modern world Gilliam didn’t have problems talking about the subject, but it was oddly uncomfortable sharing this kind of information now.
“Aaaanyway-” Gilliam forcefully changed the subject again. It was easier to just talk about something everyone wanted than to try and avoid this. “We have a meeting later today. We can play around until then, I suppose we have a few more hours before we need to consider leaving.”
Petal and Angela nodded, Kintas didn’t seem to care as long as he could fight.
Armed with a new thing to try out, this felt like a good time to play with creating something to not only surprise Kintas, but testing out on-the-fly summoning.
“Then, let’s test a new trick with our friend here.” Gilliam smiled in a slightly sadistic way. The man had killed him at least twenty times more than he had retaliated, perhaps it was time to even out the playing field.
Kintas smiled oddly satisfied with this and though he didn’t take a stance, he seemed ready nonetheless. “Bring it, fucker.” It was toned very much like a command rather than a request. Kintas was ready, and being in the dome is the perfect place to learn the limits of summoning magic safely.
“Understood.” Gilliam didn't plan to start massively big, but he had an idea he wanted to test.