Greg couldn’t exactly remember the context around it, whether it was a movie or just a short clip, but he could remember watching a video in which one person asked another if he knew how to boil a frog. The person asked just shrugged and said to just put it in hot water. The first person, however, shook his head and replies that, it’ll just jump out. Instead, you put it in a pot of cold water. Because there is no present danger and the frog can’t comprehend the concept of future danger, it won’t jump out. After that, you just seal the pot and place it on the fire. By the time the frog realizes that something is wrong, it’s already too late!

That was the closest explanation that Greg could give of the connection he had to the earth beneath his feet. Even under the pain of torture, if someone were to ask him when it was that this connection had formed, he wouldn’t be able to tell. Like the frog in the pot, the change had been so slow and gradual that he probably wouldn’t have become aware of it until much further in the future. Unlike the frog in the slowly boiling water, however, Greg didn’t think that the connection was harmful to him. It’s just that, his discovery of this connection came at the worst possible moment, and that is when Olivia activated the Earth-lock formation.

When Greg had run to the edge of the clearing, he’d been careful to stay out of the immobilization formation but inside the Earth-lock one. The plan would fall apart if he was immobilized and rendered unable to throw the Earth’s bane potion at the Obsidian earthmover. On the other hand, he couldn’t risk stepping on the ground that the beast could move, so he stayed within the Earth-lock formation. This, as it turns out, was a mistake on his part as it wasn’t just the beast that was cut off from the earth when the formation activated. In sharp contrast to the gradual way in which the connection had formed, the suddenness with which it was cut immediately caught all of Greg’s attention.

The closest approximation of what he felt at that moment, would be if one was on the top floor of a skyscraper working on their computer, then all of a sudden, the whole building disappears right from under them. Even if one was working on the most important document on the planet, their attention would be forcibly dragged away from the computer. To Greg, it felt like one second he was standing on solid ground, and in the next, he was over the mouth of a vast hole. Despite the urgency of the situation he was in, his gaze dropped to the ground under him. Rather than help, however, looking down only added to the weirdness.

Looking down at his feet, Greg could quite literally see that his feet were planted on firm ground. But despite the report of his eyes, his mind was panicking as he ‘felt’ no earth beneath him. It was like placing your hand on the wall, seeing that you had placed your hand on the wall, and yet for some reason, your mind just simply refuses to register the fact that your hand was in contact with the wall. It wasn’t a failure in any of his five senses. Short of hearing and tasting it, seeing as there was none in his mouth, Greg could touch, see and even smell the earth under him. However, it seems that his mind had stopped using any of his five senses to perceive the ground under him.

Instead, this strange new connection that he had to the earth now served that role… and it had been cut. Greg wasn’t sure how the Earth-lock formation worked, but suddenly, it was as if the earth beneath his feet was no longer earth. Something essential to it that made it the earth Greg was used to, had been taken away from it, and try as he would, Greg could now no longer interface with it. Despite his best efforts to suppress it, there was a growing sense of urgency within him that he needed to get back on ‘firm ground’. Like a drowning man unable to stop himself from thrashing, Greg found himself having turned around and quickly taking the few steps that would take him out of the formation.

“MASTER!”

Greg barely even had a second to breathe out a sigh of relief at his reestablished connection with the earth when he heard Olivia shouting his name with panic and urgency. Greg’s eyes widened with horror as he remembered the situation he was in. That horror only doubled as it hit him that he couldn’t tell how long he’d been distracted by the ground below his feet. The familiar had warned him that the two formations would drain her in two to three breaths. But by her pale parlor and the trickle of blood that was flowing down her nose, she had been struggling to hold on for longer than that. His role in this plan had been the simplest and the one with the least amount of risk, and yet, he’d fucked it up!

Feelings of guilt, shame, and self-recrimination welled up inside Greg at his failure. He wanted nothing more than to smack himself hard across the face for what he could only describe as unforgivable stupidity. Greg, however, immediately pushed all those feelings back down, knowing that this wasn’t the time for that. From the way she had been calling out to him, Greg could tell that it wasn’t the first or second time that she’d shouted his name. And looking at the beast that stood frozen just a few feet away from where she was with its head lowered, Greg could understand why she was panicking. As soon as she lost control of the formations, the beast would impale her on one of its long obsidian horns.

Tightening his grip around the glass orb with the Earth’s bane potion inside, Greg was about to pull back and throw the orb with all his might at the obsidian earthmover. This, however, was the moment the other shoe dropped.

A cry of agony left Greg as a burning pain shot through his right leg. It was as if a piece of burning coal had been pressed up against the lap of his right leg. Given how torn up his pants were by the run here, it was a wonder that his pockets hadn’t spilled out all their contents during the escape. It was through those same torn pants that Greg mercifully noticed that the thing burning him was in his pocket. Ironically, Greg couldn’t see any blackening or signs of burning on the cloth itself. It’s as if the heat was selectively choosing what to burn and what not to. Panicking from the urgency of the situation and gritting his teeth from the pain, Greg reached into his pocket, grabbed the offending token, and threw it away.

With barely any thought given to his hurting fingers, Greg turned back ready to throw the Earth's bane potion at the beast. He, however, only turned back in time to catch it as Olivia lost her corporeal form, turning back into a mote of light that shot towards him just as the beast barreled through the place she’d been in less than a second before. Greg had wasted too much time, their window had closed. He was in denial. Greg just couldn’t believe that what had been an almost perfect plan had come apart in such a spectacularly random fashion. First, their own formation works against him, then a token from the healer that hadn’t malfunctioned before acts up at this most inopportune of times!

It… it felt unsatisfactory! It was winding back to throw the perfect punch at one’s opponent only to get your feet tangled and end up punching air. Greg grit his teeth in frustration, fighting the urge to lash out, to find someone to blame for this outcome. Whether it be himself for not following through on his part of the plan, or the healer giving him a defective token, Greg wanted to vent his displeasure on someone. The only reason he managed to keep control of himself was how pointless it would be. Like the tantrums of a child after they had failed to get their way. Not only would it show immaturity on his part, but worse yet, it wouldn’t undo what had already happened. He had fucked up, and that was that!

‘Y… you need to run, master!”

Greg’s self-loathing went up several notches when he heard just how weak even her mental voice was. Still, he couldn’t argue with Olivia’s recommendation. With the obfuscation amulet, the obsidian earthmover wouldn’t be able to detect him even if he walked up to it. This, however, meant that this was the last position it had tracked him to before losing him. True to its nature, it would go on a rampage and destroy everything in the vicinity, perhaps assuming that he was hiding out in the trees. One way or the other, it wouldn’t be a smart thing for him to hang around. While the obfuscation amulet would completely hide him from the beast’s senses, it wouldn’t in any way keep him from being trampled.

Turning around, Greg planned to walk away from the scene and head back to town. He, however, was frozen in place when he found the healer standing quietly beside him. Had Olivia been in a better condition, she probably would have alerted him to his teacher’s presence. As things stood, however, Greg fought the urge to jump back and yelp in surprise. Despite his shocked response to her sudden appearance, the healer showed no indication that she had even noticed his presence. Instead, her eyes calmly surveyed the clearing. Greg looked down at the obfuscation amulet, thinking that it was the reason she’d shown no reaction to him. Olivia, however, was quick to disabuse him of the notion.

‘Her core and mana pathways may be wrecked but she’s still a seventh-tier mage. That amulet hides you about as much as holding up a single leaf to your face would,’ she relayed.

Turning back to the healer, she still did not indicate that she had noticed him. This, however, only made him more uneasy. Greg doubted that Olivia was wrong. It wasn’t that his teacher hadn’t noticed him, instead, she was giving him the silent treatment. It’s only now as he looked closer at the healer that Greg noticed the displeasure in her expression. She wasn’t just being quiet to avoid alerting the obsidian earthmover to her presence, instead, she was angry. Greg suspected that this anger was directed at him. Her gaze moved around the clearing, from the beast which was currently unsuccessfully trying to catch one of Olivia’s clones, to the two control plates at the center of the clearing.

Greg wasn’t sure what the healer thought as a result of all she saw, one thing was for certain, the cat was out of the bag. Part of the reason Greg had tried to get as far away from the town as possible was because of her. Given the nature of the foe he faced, it was almost certain that he’d have to make use of items from the Magic shop. The only problem with this was the fact that he couldn’t reveal that source to anyone. With other townspeople, he could lie and say that the healer was the one that gave it to him, no one would be daring enough to question the healer. But then, what would he tell the healer? What possible explanation could he give for having two high-grade tier-three formations among others?

A frown crossed Greg as something occurred to him. He had run all the way out here to avoid this exact situation. So how is it that the healer was here? How did she know where he was and what was going on? Greg’s eyes went wide as he remembered something, the token. Greg didn’t have to look for long as he turned to find the token sitting alone on the ground with all the leaves, twigs, and debris around it having been pushed about three feet away from it. It was the star-shaped token, the one that would allow the healer to teleport over to him when activated. The thing hadn’t been malfunctioning, it had just been activated from the other end by the healer.

This explained why it had ‘burned’ him but not his pants. The healer had warned him that no one and nothing should be close to the token once it was activated. The reason for this was that spatial magic was unstable and could by extension be very lethal. When teleporting between two stable points like the hidden room in the infirmary and her cave, there wasn’t much risk as all risk factors had been controlled for. But with things like the token where the target location was unpredictable, there were certain risks involved. One of those risk factors was the presence of others or inanimate objects close to the teleportation point.

She had been insistent that the token needed to be activated and then thrown somewhere without people. The token itself would clear the area around it of inanimate matter. If you weren’t careful, you could easily find yourself fused in unexpected, possibly lethal ways. According to her, if something was where another item or person was being transported, spatial magic wouldn’t push the first object away, it would just merge the two. Having one’s face merge with someone’s chest or some other gruesome fate awaited people who weren’t careful when using spatial magic. The healer had added a warning system to the token to let Greg know when he was too close to it during activation.

The ‘burning’ sensation he’d felt wasn’t from the token heating up. Instead, it was something she had called an illusory sensation enchantment that caused it. The enchantment caused the part of one’s body closest to the token to feel like it was burning if it was within the unsafe radius for teleportation. This was why it had ‘burned’ his leg and then his fingers when Greg reached into his pocket to take the token out. This enchantment ensured that not a single part of an individual was close enough to cause issues with the teleportation. But while Greg now understood what had happened with the token, another, more pertinent question remained wholly unanswered.

Why?

Why would the healer randomly decide to teleport to his location? He hadn’t sent any distress signals to her that would cause her to know that he was in danger. And given what he knew of her, it wasn’t like she was an idle person. Almost every spare moment she had, she would spend engrossed in one type of experiment or research project or the other. So, it wasn’t like she would just randomly decide to teleport over to check on him on a whim or because she had nothing better to do. If she was here, then it was definitely because she knew something was up and had come to his rescue. Greg couldn’t help but look at the token on the ground with suspicion. Was she using them to track and spy on him?

“H… how did you know about the beast?” Greg did his best to keep his voice level and devoid of any suspicion as he posed the question. Greg didn’t want to distrust the healer. Before he jumped to any conclusions, he wanted to get her side of the story. Perhaps there was a logical reason for why she was here. Given all that she had done for him, she deserved at least that much.

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From the way she turned to look at him, Greg knew that despite his best efforts, she had picked up on the slight mistrust in his voice. There was no overt reaction from her at this. Her tone remained just as flat as her expression as she replied. “The Town-head and each of the three families have a token that they can use to call me if they require emergency healing that can’t wait for them to reach the infirmary. One thing you learn with long life is that fear alone often isn’t enough to keep people in line. Unless they benefit from you in some way, the fear will quickly turn to resentment, leading them to do stupid things. Having critical care when they most need it is enough to keep the three families pacified.”

“The three families fear me enough that they only use those tokens for real emergencies and not just for convenience. So when the token given to the Valla household started flashing, naturally, I answered. So imagine my surprise when I get to the Valla household and no one appears hurt or sick in any way. As it turns out, they had given the token to their son who had gone out hunting with my student, just in case of anything. Tracking the position of the token, I and a few of Valla's best hunters rush into the forest to find Niya and my student. Of course, I was worried, but I trusted that my student would abide by our agreement. That he would summon me should he find himself in mortal danger. So, I stayed calm!”

“So, once again, imagine my complete shock when I found out that not only had my student come across a serious threat to his life, but that he had chosen to completely ignore the understanding we had? That he had chosen not summon me to his aid when his life was in danger!” She asked looking at him with the coldest gaze she had ever directed at him.

Greg very much wanted to turn his gaze away, he wanted to hang his head in shame. Part of him even wanted to protest that he had done this to protect her just in case the beast proved to be too much for her. All of it, however, felt hollow. A flimsy excuse that, looking back now, didn’t justify him risking his life in the way that he had. She may not have made that big a deal of it, but Greg knew that she was relying on him to restart her journey as a mage and healer. If through his recklessness something happened to him, then she would be stuck as she is seeing as she’s not allowed to reveal the sigil to anyone according to her agreement with Olivia's true self.

“S… so Niya is still alive?” was the only thing Greg could say in response. It was a weak response, but Greg had nothing better to say. She had spoken nothing but the truth and trying to make excuses would have required that he come up with lies to tell her and he had already promised that he would never betray her trust like that.

“The beast sent an earth spike through his left knee,” The healer answered him, her gaze still hard. “It only immobilized him probably expecting to get back to him before long. He bled a lot, and a lesser healer would probably have had to amputate the leg, but, other than resting and limping for a few days, he should be fine,” She added. There was a long silence between them before the healer spoke up once again. “You look down on me,” She said. Greg’s first instinct was to object. To tell her that there was no one he respected more. The look in her eyes, however, quickly shut him up. She wasn’t making an accusation, she wasn’t trying to get reassurances from him, she was stating it as fact!

There was a cold, ruthless, and monstrous side to the healer. She had never tried to hide it. Over the months, the healer had dropped hints here and there. In her speech, in her demeanor, and even by the look in her eyes. Greg had even been scared stiff whenever he caught glimpses of it. However, it was only now as he regarded his teacher that he realized that he had never taken that side of her quite as seriously as he should have. Olivia had once said that anyone who made it to the level of a seventh-tier mage was up to their eyeballs in the blood of others. His teacher had been present at the time and hadn’t tried to argue otherwise. Greg felt like he was encased in ice as he looked into his teacher’s eyes. He knew that his actions had roused that monster within her.

“Come with me,” She calmly instructed as she turned around. The Obsidian earthmover was still rampaging inside the clearing that she was walking towards. However, not even for a second did Greg entertain even the notion of not following her. Right now, this small woman felt like a much scarier monster than the behemoth being led around by the nose by Olivia’s clones.

As soon as she stepped into the clearing, the obsidian earthmover stopped chasing one of Olivia’s clones and turned to face his teacher. The beast didn’t have much of an expression given that it was coated in obsidian. Its eyes, however, showed some measure of caution and confusion. On some level, it must have sensed that the healer was a serious threat that it needed to be wary of. On the other hand, due to her damaged core and mana pathways, the healer didn’t give off any discernible aura that would justify this assessment. By its hesitancy as to whether to attack or run, Greg could tell that the beast wasn’t sure whether to trust its instincts or not.

Not that it mattered.

There was no doubt in Greg that the beast’s fate had been sealed the moment the healer walked into the clearing. He didn’t have to wait long for his words to be proven true. Years as a creature that few others were willing to challenge had left the obsidian earthmover too bold for its own good. In the end, it chose to challenge the healer. The last mistake it would ever make in this life. With a deep bellow, the beast aimed its long obsidian horn at the healer and began to charge at her. Greg turned to look at his teacher, curious to see what she would do in response. With her hands behind her back, however, the healer just calmly watched it approach.

Owing to its massive size, the beast only needed to take ten steps to cross the distance between them from the other side of the clearing. This short distance, however, might as well have been an impassable chasm for the beast. For reasons that Greg couldn’t decipher, it only managed to accelerate in the first four steps. The beast slowed in its last six steps before coming to a complete stop with the sharp point of its horn just inches away from the healer’s chest. Looking at the way the beast’s eyes had gone wide, Greg could tell that it hadn’t slowed down of its own volition. There seemed to be some struggle in its eyes but it didn’t move an inch. Like a statue, it stood frozen before the healer.

“Are you familiar with puppets?” The healer suddenly asked.

The question was out of left field and Greg wasn’t sure what she was after. Given the mood she was in, however, Greg just gave a straight answer. “Yes, the carpenter would make them to entertain us back when we were kids,” he said. While he was familiar with them even from his former life, Greg gave an answer relevant to this one.

“In a way, our bodies, be they human or animal, are like puppets,” She said with a quiet fascination that caused cold chills to crawl down Greg’s spine. “The bones are the figurines being controlled, the muscles are the strings being pulled to move the bones, and through very small almost invisible strings that are spread throughout your body that act as the puppeteer’s fingers, the brain controls this puppet,” she stated.

Had he been born and raised in this little town, the healer’s words would have been confusing to Greg. As someone from the twenty-first century who’d always been fond of the sciences, he knew a bit about the human anatomy. And when he thought through what the healer had just said, it made perfect sense. All muscles in the body, except perhaps for the tongue, were attached to a particular bone. Any motion made by the human body is usually because, like a puppet string, a certain muscle is pulling against certain bones. Greg could even remember seeing a picture of the layout of nerves in the body. It was all too easy to see why one would think of them as strings spread out from the brain to the whole body.

“Hard as it may be to picture this, it is the truth,” The healer calmly continued, heedless of just how much Greg did indeed understand her words. Both Greg’s and the beast’s eyes followed her hand as the healer raised it and then lifted her finger pointing it to the sky. The healer’s voice grew a lot colder as she continued. “I may not be a mind mage, but with enough insight into the school of life, you can learn how to hijack control from the brain,” She stated. Like a metronome, the healer started to move her finger from left to right. Greg could feel a block of ice settle in the pit of his stomach as he watched the massive head of the beast start to move left to right in time with the healer’s finger.

“My kind of control is even better than that of mind mages because I don’t need to have a battle of wills with your mind. I simply bypass the puppeteer and take control of the puppet itself. Unless they are equal to me or more powerful than I am, then regardless of their cunning, of their intelligence, of which school of magic they ascribe to, of whether they be man or beast, there are few beings that I’ve met that I can not make to kneel before me,” The healer’s words were marked by the loud sound of the obsidian earthmover's body hitting the ground before her. Only it wasn’t its whole body. The creature’s back legs were still straight even as its muzzle was driven into the dirt making it look like it was in supplication to the healer.

“Even among my peers, few were willing to antagonize me enough to find out just how far my control can go,” She continued, the look in her eyes growing more and more dangerous with each passing second. “The few fools that did never got to tell tale of it. You see, trusting in their ability to keep control of their body, they thought themselves safe from me. Little did they know that I don’t need to attack from the top down,” she said, a cruel gleam in her eyes. Greg noticed all the muscles on the body of the obsidian earthmover tense up and for a moment, he thought that it was fighting to regain control. This thought, however, was dispelled as it remained frozen and the healer continued to speak.

“I can take control at any level I wish to,” She declared with the finality of an emperor even as the muscles in the beast continued to tighten up beyond anything that could have been comfortable. The eyes of the beast were wide with clear agony, but not a sound escaped it. Even without her saying so, Greg knew that his teacher was depriving the beast of the ability to give voice to its agony. The only voice allowed in the clearing was the healer’s. “What do you think happens when the puppet is not strong enough to withstand the pull of the string?” The healer almost whispered even as the clearing was filled with the sound of the beast’s back legs being crushed.

The bones in its back legs weren’t just broken, it was like a man had placed a biscuit in the palm of his hand and closed it with every bit of strength they could muster. Greg didn’t know how, but the healer had made the muscles in the beast’s back legs almost double in size and then contract with such force that the bones they were attached to were reduced to mush. The beast was now lying on the ground on its stomach, probably cursing itself for not choosing to run away when it could. “I can make your bones so brittle that the very act of turning your head will break all seven bones in your neck. I can make them so weak that your body weight would be enough to snap them like rotten twigs!” She said, ice in her voice.

Over the next hour, Greg went from fearing the obsidian earthmover to pitying the creature as the healer showed him the true horror of a healer who chose to turn their knowledge of the body against it. Her abilities didn’t just end at taking control of the beast. Greg watched as the beast’s obsidian armor along with its skin fell off like they were loose garments. He watched as spikes grew from the bones of the flayed beast and pierced through the muscles around them turning the beast into a macabre hedgehog. He watched as the beast’s muscles repeatedly tore and repaired themselves. He watched as the back of the beast opened up like a pair of doors, exposing its organs to the sunlight, all the while it was still very much alive. The beast stayed like this for most of the hour as the healer played around with its insides. The beast was finally granted the mercy of death when the healer turned its lungs to bone and watched as the beast slowly suffocated to death.

By the time the healer was done, Greg was visibly shaking in fear. The darker side of the healer that had clawed its way up to the seventh tier in a cruel magical world had shown itself and one thing was for certain, Greg hadn’t at all been prepared. What was even more terrifying was the thought that his teacher was holding back. She was limited in the amount of mana that she could use to the equivalent of a third-tier mage despite being a seventh-tier one. As such, by definition, she hadn’t gone all out. It made Greg weak in the knees to imagine what Alena would be able to do if she was at her full power. Greg didn’t know if the three families had been subjected to the same spectacle, but he now fully understood why they feared her.

“You see that I am limited in how much mana I can use to the equivalent of a third-tier mage so you make the grave mistake of thinking that I am equal to them in power! I am a seventh-tier mage Roka, the things I know, the things I can do, no third-tier mage can hope to replicate! Even if I only had access to half the mana that I do now, there isn’t a third-tier mage or beast in this world that can hope to be a match for me! When your awakening through the sigil is done, you’ll be a first-tier mage with enough mana to match a third-tier mage. When you dissolve my mana pathways, and take me through the process, I’ll still be a seventh-tier mage limited to the amount of mana that a third-tier mage has!” She growled, her cold eyes fixed on him. “Do not ever repeat this, Roka! Do I make myself clear?” She demanded.

His throat dry, Greg could only nod in acquiescence.

The healer glared at him for what was probably a few seconds but felt like an eternity. In the end, she offered one last statement as she turned around. “Your break is over! I expect to see you for lessons tomorrow,” She said walking back over to the corpse. Greg wasn’t too bothered by his break being cut short, he was too preoccupied with the sudden fear that the healer planned to continue her horror show with the beast. The thing should have been dead, but after an hour-long demonstration of just what she could do, Greg wouldn’t put it past her to somehow resurrect the animal and continue with her torture.

The healer, however, did no such thing. Casting a spell under her breath, Greg watched as ghostly hands reached into the chest of the beast and picked up the sizable heart inside. The thing had to be almost twenty kilograms by Greg’s estimation. The four large blood vessels attached to it simply fell off as if someone had detached them. With the organ now floating before her, Greg watched as the healer ran the index finger of her right hand along the midline of the heart. Like the world’s sharpest scalpel, the finger cleanly cut the heart in two. At first, Greg couldn’t understand what the healer was up to. Was this some last act of cruelty to emphasize her point or something? Then the crystal fell out.

It was a small, amber-colored thing, about the size of a golf ball and smooth as a cue ball. Inside a human heart, the thing would have been big enough to be life-threatening. But relative to the obsidian earthmover’s massive heart, it was small enough to be lodged inside one of its muscles. The last rational thought that Greg could remember having was that this was probably the obsidian earthmover’s beast core. With the hunger of a man that hadn’t eaten a thing for a week straight or the thirst of a parched man in the desert every cell in Greg’s body so forcefully craved the simple pebble-like thing that he was moving before he even knew it. All horror at what the healer had just done was forgotten, all fear of her barely even registered in the face of one simple fact, he had to have that core…