Chapter 188: 252. Image

Jia had to admit that once they’d gotten over the initial awkwardness, it was actually pretty fun chatting with her friends about risque topics and relationships. Rika had enthusiastically restarted the entire conversation, refusing to miss out entirely—even getting Ja Yun to join in on the gossip. It really was nice just spending the day relaxing and catching up with her friends.

When the day was over, Eui ended up securing a private room and making absolutely sure that Jia relaxed. All night. By any means necessary. Jia blushed at the recollection—she couldn’t complain about that either. Eui had even put some of Jung’s advice to good use.

But after an entire full day and night of rest and relaxation, Jia was anxious to get something done. She wasn’t sure what exactly, but she decided that heading out to the base’s training field would be a good start. She was met by Minami Yuuko, who had gotten the hang of using Narae and Heian to train her squad by turning training exercises into games. It was good training for everyone involved, but Jia didn’t have much to add there.

Heian still hadn’t returned to Jia’s soulscape, which was both concerning and promising. It was good that she was spending more time in the physical realm, but the sudden shift in behavior was slightly worrying. The cat spirit had yet to give any indication that she was uncomfortable or unhappy, though, and Jia was willing to leave it at that for now.

Off to the side, Jia noticed Ja Yun, sitting on a patch of grass and idly watching the exercises with Muddy wobbling away on top of her head. That gave Jia an idea, and she wandered over to sit next to the former war mage.

“Good morning, Ja Yun.”

“Morning, Miss Lee. Where’s your other half?”

Jia let her attention drift to Eui’s senses for a moment before answering.

“Cooking breakfast for the soldiers whose barracks we displaced last night. What about yours?”

Ja Yun chuckled awkwardly.

“Which one?”

Jia raised an eyebrow and cocked her head curiously, and Ja Yun began waving her hands and shaking her head urgently.

“N-not that the princess and I have—I mean, she would never—I just—”

“Calm down, Ja Yun, I’m not judging you. You should have a bit more confidence in yourself.”

“So I’ve heard... So how can I help you, Miss Lee?”

Jia drew her knees up and pouted.

“What makes you think I want something? Can’t I just sit and have a chat with a friend?”

Ja Yun shrugged.

“It’s not exactly your style. I’m not upset about it or anything—I like being useful.”

A lot to unpack there, but Jia decided to just press on.

“I was wondering if you could teach me how to talk to Muddy—and other elementals.”

“Me? Teach you?! Miss spirit-whisperer, the one who changed the face of cultivation across the entire continent? You realize those soldiers over there are training to copy the cultivation methods you invented when you were fifteen. And you want me to teach you.”

Jia nodded matter-of-factly.

“Mhm! I don’t know how to talk to elementals the way you do, and I’d like to learn. Between you and me, my master instructed me to learn as many techniques as I could get my hands on.”

Ja Yun shook her head.

“You were the one who inspired me in the first place. Without your advice back in the throne room, I’d have never been able to channel Iseul.”

“Sure, but my advice was just based on my experience with talking to spirits, which I assure you has been no help with Muddy. Plus, the results you got were so far beyond anything I was expecting.”

“I mean, I guess I could try teaching you. I’m not a very good teacher, though.”

Jia chuckled.

“Me either, but I am a fast learner! Why don’t you try me?”

Ja Yun sighed and pulled Muddy off her head, shifting around to face Jia and placing the elemental between them.

“Alright, sure. Okay, so you know how you have a sort of awareness within your aura as the origin of your mana senses?”

Jia held back a grimace. It had been years since those terms applied to her, as her domain had entirely eclipsed her old mana sense ever since she’d broken through to the second stage. She silently reminded herself to help Ja Yun and Narae build up their own domains when she got the chance, then nodded and listened intently to Ja Yun’s lecture.

 

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Ja Yun was a better teacher than she’d given herself credit for. It didn’t hurt that communication with elementals was actually very similar to her oldest form of joint cultivation—the one she’d used back when she was still experimenting with sharing thoughts and memories with Eui after their first awakening. The tricky part was that unlike joint meditation where everything was shared wholesale, communicating with elementals required a more delicate touch.

Jia focused on a single thought, imagining Muddy sliming it’s way up her arm and onto her shoulder. Then, she reached out with her domain and ever so gently allowed it to brush up against Muddy’s thin aura. Muddy reacted by pushing its awareness—which Jia sensed as a particularly concentrated bit of mana—up to the surface of its aura.

Muddy’s awareness flooded Jia’s mind with a torrent of disorienting and alien thoughts, but Jia honed her focus back to the image she’d formed. After a moment, the deluge of thoughts crystalized into the same image, and Muddy’s awareness withdrew itself.

Jia held out a hand and Muddy dutifully rolled itself over and began to climb up. It was a bit of an odd sensation—Muddy was cool and moist to the touch, but left her skin completely dry. It really felt as if touching it would leave her hand slimy, but it never did. Muddy made its way up to her shoulder, then perched there without a care in the world.

Ja Yun stared blankly at Jia.

“You know that took me like a week of practice to do, right?”

Jia grinned sheepishly, shrugging.

“I told you I’m a fast learner. Besides, Eui knows how to do it now too, and she didn’t even do anything.”

Ja Yun threw her hands up in disgust.

“Rika’s right, you two are completely unfair. Is there anything else I can do for you? Any other lifelong accomplishments you’d like to pick up in less than an hour?”

“Actually, I do have something else you might be able to help with—but it’s more of a long term project...”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you were pretty good in your mage school right? Dae seemed pretty impressed by you.”

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“College, and I guess so. Wait—he was?!”

Jia nodded enthusiastically.

“He’s the one who told Eunae that your potential is wasted on soldiery. Anyway, I was wondering if you’d be willing to help me out with a little spellcraft research.”

Ja Yun cocked her head and scooted forward, suddenly focusing with an intensity that Jia had never seen on her.

“What kind of spellcraft?”

“Well, there are a few spells and formations that I’ve seen over the last few years that I’ve had a hard time with. Do Hye’s barrier spell, for example, is one that I was able to make a breakthrough on thanks to Dae’s help, but I’ve got others that I haven’t been able to work through.”

The mage cringed, sucking air in through her teeth.

“That sounds...a lot higher level than I’d be able to handle, Jia. Didn’t Dae have specialized knowledge about his master’s techniques that helped unravel that one? I don’t have anything like that.”

Jia shook her head.

“I can give you Dae’s notes on the intermediate stuff, but it’s become pretty clear that I don’t have a head for spellcraft. You were a mage, and if Dae was singing your praises then you’re probably smarter than I am.”

“I don’t know...”

“Can I at least show you the spells before you decide?”

That caught Ja Yun’s attention, and the mage blinked at Jia, furrowing her brows.

“Wait, you have actual samples? Like written down? You’re not just trying to replicate them from scratch?”

“Sort of. It would be easier to just show you than explain.”

Jia reached up and plucked the mud elemental off her shoulder, handing it back to Ja Yun before clarifying.

“I mean really show you.”

Ja Yun snorted as she took Muddy back, shaking her head ruefully.

“You’ve known this technique for all of two minutes and now you want to try casually sharing memories with each other?”

“In fairness, I’d been doing that already long before I met you.”

“...true. Alright, I suppose it can’t hurt.”

“Great!”

Jia closed her eyes in meditation and began to pick through the mental snapshots she’d taken of various complex spells and formations. The simplest one to start with was Seong Misun’s wind walking spell, which she’d seen and experienced enough times to have a wealth of examples to pull from.

She concentrated on those memories and reached out with her domain to touch Ja Yun’s aura. Normally, her domain would be impossible to sense for someone without their own unless she was actively suppressing their aura, but she’d already learned that she could initiate contact this way from Muddy.

Ja Yun’s awareness reached out tentatively, but recoiled as soon as it made contact with Jia’s domain. The mage herself reeled back, covering her nose and groaning in pain.

“Aaagh, too much! Jia, that was way too much! Ow, my head!”

She wiped frantically at her nose as it dripped blood all over her front. Morbidly, Jia noted that Muddy took the opportunity to pick up a few drops for itself, happily absorbing them.

“Sorry! I forgot you’re still in the early second stage! I’ll try to narrow it down a bit more.”

Jia remembered just how overwhelming her Absolute Awareness technique had been back when she’d first learned it. She’d suffered her own fair share of massive nosebleeds in the process of developing the technique.

She focused on the spell again, narrowing it down to just her single best example. Even still, she suspected that would be too much, and she broke it down into components. Misun’s windwalking was a spell-scribed technique, which meant that it used a spell to draw a formation. Dae had taught her the principle, and used it against her in a duel once, but it added extra layers of complexity to the spell.

Instead, she focused on just the formation—the part that was actually responsible for the final effect. The spell that created the formation was something that they could reverse engineer later, if they had to. With her image formed, Jia tried again—reaching out with her domain to gently brush against Ja Yun’s aura.

Understandably, Ja Yun was a bit more reluctant to accept the offer, but after a bit of hesitation, her awareness contacted Jia’s domain with just the barest touch. There was a jumbled flash of Ja Yun’s surface thoughts colliding with the idea that Jia dutifully ignored as they resolved back into the image that she’d formed.

“Okay! I got it! I got it. Whew!”

Ja Yun sat back, visibly sweating from the effort of maintaining her focus—and with a small dribble of blood leaking from her nostril.

“This is...wow! This is so much better than a written copy! You got images like this for...how many spells?”

Jia began counting off on her fingers.

“That one, the one that Void used to seal the Queen, the shields protecting the palace and the throne room, all the formations in the Sky Hall where Rika did her breakthrough to the third stage, then there’s—”

“Okay, stop, stop!”

Ja Yun rubbed at her face anxiously.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to know any of those. Ancestors, even stealing Princess Seong’s wind walking could get us into huge trouble.”

Jia deflated.

“So you’re not going to help me decipher them?”

“W-well, I never said that. Just...oh, ancestors, what am I getting myself into? Look, if you’ve got this and you still can’t figure the spells out, then you’re absolutely right—you need my help. And, like I said, I like being useful so...yeah. Yeah, I’ll help you with these spells but please, please, don’t tell anybody that I was involved.”

Jia perked up and grinned, excited to finally make some headway in the discipline that had given her so much trouble over the years.

“You have my word! I won’t tell a soul!”

Ja Yun shook her head miserably.

“I’m already starting to regret this...”