Chapter 126: Chapter 126: Core evolution

The tunnel continued on for quite a while, twisting and turning back and forth. The farther Henry got, the more he felt a slight pressure building. It started to get marginally annoying, but it wasn’t anything unsurpassable.

At the base of the tunnel was a thick iron door. Hundreds of runes covered both the door and the stone surrounding it. There were several dozen containment runes, along with a fair amount of runes that were meant to hide the door from human sight.

Henry smirked to himself. As much as they might have done to a mortal, the runes were borderline completely ineffective against him. He slipped underneath the door, entering a medium sized room behind it.

Like the door, the room was covered in sealing runes. Deep gouges similar to the ones in the boy’s bathroom covered the walls and floor, tearing many of the runes apart. There was a small, battered chair in the corner of the room. Beside it was a pile of entrails and guts that strongly resembled the ones that had belonged to the panther. The hilt of a large sword stuck out from the wall where it had been buried.

Mark stood above the chair, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. The boy’s skin had taken on a faint reddish sheen and his fingers had elongated into claws. Two thick fangs stuck out from the base of his mouth and the ground beneath his feet rippled and churned like a pool of water.

The boy, unaware of Henry’s presence, let out a snarl and thrust his hand forward. A burst of jagged sand blades shout out from the ground beneath him, peppering the wall. He let out a furious cry, slamming his hands into the ground and raking his claws through it.

“A demon,” Henry mused to himself. “And not a happy one. Interesting.”

Mark continued his rampage, tearing at the room’s walls and shouting unintelligible curses. After several minutes, the tirade suddenly stopped. Mark straightened, his eyes flashing with malice, and brushed his clothes off.

He reached out and wrapped a hand around the hilt of the huge sword. The red color drained away from his skin and a small gem in the pommel of the weapon lit up with the same colored light.

Mark tore the weapon out of the wall with one firm yank, then thrust the blade into his own chest. The blade vanished as it entered him, sliding into his body and disappearing along with all traces of the demon.

He ran his hands through his hair, looking around the room. His eyes passed right over Henry, but it was impossible to distinguish the eldritch creature from the rest of the shadows in the room. Mark let out a sigh. His hands clenched at his sides, but then they relaxed again.

Henry slipped to the side as Mark strode past his hiding place, pressing his hand against the heavy door. The runes covering it lit up with a faint white light and the door swung open with a hiss. Mark slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him.

After waiting a few minutes to make sure he was really gone, Henry rose up from the shadows and examined the room more closely. The cuts covering the walls were clearly a mixture of both sword and claw.

While many of the runes had been destroyed, there were a good number that appeared entirely unscathed by the scars covering the walls and floor. A brief inspection also told Henry that Mark wasn’t the one that had drawn the runes – subtle differences in the thickness of the strokes and the style in which the runes had been used made it clear that multiple different mages had drawn them.

Henry spent a few more minutes examining the room before he slipped back under the door, traveling back up through the tunnel and sliding underneath Mark’s bed as he shot out the door and back into Damien’s room, where he returned the boy’s shadow to him.

Well?

“Plane of Fury,” Henry said. “His companion is a demon. It’s not a weak one either, all things considered. He appears to have difficulty controlling it. When I arrived, he was locked away in a runed bunker tearing the place up.”

That doesn’t seem safe.

“Says the boy with an eldritch monster inside him,” Henry laughed.

I – you know, I don’t know how I managed to forget that. It’s not like the school knows about you, though. They’re clearly aware of Mark.

Sylph, who had been sitting on her bed, prodded Damien in the leg with her foot. “What did he find out?”

Damien nodded towards the training rooms and stood up, heading into the farthest one. Sylph followed after him. Once they got there, Damien quietly relayed all the information Henry gave him.

“Huh,” Sylph said. “That’s interesting. I suppose that’s why he gets to live alone. If you think about it, it’s not really all that weird. A lot of the most powerful mages have something or another wrong with them, so I can see why Blackmist would try to accommodate him. If Mark could harness the demon, he’d be incredibly powerful.”

“Well, now that we know I kind of feel bad for intruding on his privacy,” Damien said, frowning.

“It’s information,” Sylph replied, shrugging. “If it had been such a big secret, he wouldn’t have mentioned anything about it where we could hear. It’s not like we’ll be telling anyone else.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Damien agreed. “I’m going to get back to training now, though. Delph is probably going to run us ragged the next time we see him, and I can’t imagine he’s going to wait long before showing up for our next session.”

Sylph nodded. “I was about to say the same. Good luck.”

Damien wished her the same as he walked back into the outer training room, casting out his net of mental energy and illuminating the Ether around him.

I’ve done a good amount of martial arts training recently. Do you think you can show me that new movement spell now?

“Now isn’t a bad time,” Henry said. “This spell is pretty different from everything you’ve learned so far, though. It’s a mid to high level spell, a good bit harder than Expunge. Watch closely.”

Henry gently pushed Damien’s mind out of the way as he took control of the boy’s body. Damien paid close attention to the Ether as Henry drew several of the motes within his core forth. The mental energy surrounding them started to vibrate, turning the motes into blurs of light.

Tingles ran down Damien’s legs as the Ether shot down his legs and into his feet. He took a step forward and the ground seemed to warp and blur beneath him. The strange sensation passed, and Damien suddenly realized that he was standing a hair’s distance away from the wall.

What just happened?

“I’ll do it again. This time, instead of watching the Ether, pay attention to your body. Watch what happens and how it moves.”

Henry cast the spell again and had Damien’s body step forward. As soon as his foot hit the ground, the world shifted again. It was almost as if his mind had slowed down for a moment and he’d somehow moved across the room during that time.

I’m not sure what’s happening. This isn’t time magic, is it?

“No. I don’t have time magic,” Henry replied. “It’s still space magic, just a little more advanced than what you’ve done so far. This spell is called Warp Step. It works by compressing the space between your current location and your target for a very brief moment.”

Like teleportation?

“Not exactly,” Henry said. “It’s more like folding up the space and stepping across it. It’s not instantaneous and, unlike teleportation, it gets slower the farther that you try to go. Warp Step is ideal for fights, not travel.”

Okay, I think that makes sense. So I have to picture the area between me and the target crumpling up so I can step over it?

“Essentially,” Henry said. “Before you even try casting the spell, work on controlling the Ether. Vibrating it is a new technique that you’ll have to master before you can even think of safely casting Warp Step.”

Damien nodded. Henry gave him back control of his body, watching the boy carefully as Damien brought the net of mental energy back and drew more Ether into his core. He gathered a mote, wrapping it carefully. He tried shaking it, but ended up just moving it back and forth pointlessly.

This is harder than I thought.

“It’s almost a fully fledged high level spell,” Henry said dryly. “You can’t expect it to be simple. Don’t even think about trying to master it anytime soon – you’ll be doing good if you get an incredibly basic understanding of it, and that’ll take you time.”

We’ll see about that.

Damien returned his attention to the Ether within him. Henry’s voice faded as he redoubled his focus and dove headfirst into training once again. Difficult or not, he was determined to figure the spell out.

His training stretched through the day, and when he went to bed at night, continued in Henry’s domain. Time dragged onwards and the day turned to a week. Delph called several classes throughout it. As Damien had suspected, the professor ran the entire class to their absolute limits, not stopping until even Sylph was barely able to stand on her own.

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Damien also had several other Magic Theory classes. The more the class went on, the less he was bored with it. Greg had started going deeper into the theories behind creating new spells and modifying existing ones.

He was soon looking forward to every class, and they were a welcome break from the constant physical exertion of training with Delph and the mental fatigue of practicing Warp Step on his own.

He fell into something of a rhythm over the course of the next month. He trained martial arts together with Sylph at least once a day. Delph and Greg alternated their classes, which Damien suspected was probably what all the teachers did. Whenever he wasn’t in class or sparring with Sylph, he worked on Warp Step.

His training didn’t stop when he went to sleep. As soon as his eyes closed, Henry met him on the grassy hill and Damien resumed his practice. His incessant training proved more effective than he ever could have expected.

By the time that the month was drawing to a close, Damien was so close to being able to properly cast Warp Step that he could practically taste it. His body had grown leaner and muscles had started to become visible.

Damien didn’t hear again from Herald during the month. The eldritch creature seemed content to observe the situation, clearly already pleased with the rune circle Damien had created on his stomach.

It seemed as if Damien had just taken the last test in Magic Theory a few days ago, but it soon came time for the second exam. When Greg announced it, Damien was the only one that didn’t look particularly surprised.

Throughout the month, he’d gone over the topics that Greg had taught him with Henry. When Greg brought him to the field and began the test, Damien was able to easily answer just about every question the man asked.

Greg had him demonstrate an increasingly complex series of modified spells, but none proved too difficult for Damien to handle. The professor gave him an approving nod once he’d finished and sent him back to his room – there was no extra credit this time.

Sylph had finished her own class early as well, and was sitting on her bed meditating when Damien arrived. Her eyes opened and she raised an eyebrow.

“You’re back early.”

“Greg tested us again,” Damien said, shrugging. “I knew it was coming, so it wasn’t too hard. Something tells me that the final will be a lot more difficult.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Sylph said. “I also had a test today. I wonder if the teachers coordinate them.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Damien said, sitting down on his bed across from Sylph. “By the way, don’t we have another quest week coming up pretty soon?”

“We should,” Sylph replied. “We need to get a good amount of points, but that first quest we did handled a lot of it.”

“We can probably knock out several B ranked ones. As long as Whisp isn’t involved in it, I’ll be happy.”

“Has she contacted you recently?”

“No,” Damien said, pressing his lips together. “And, if anything, that makes me more concerned.”

“We’ll deal with it when it happens, then. There’s nothing you can do to prepare for it, so there’s no point wasting energy worrying over it.”

“I guess so,” Damien said with a sigh. “Have you been making any progress with your magic? I’ve been stuck on my newest spell for a while now, but I think I’ve almost got it.”

“A lot,” Sylph said with a wide grin. “It’s incredible. It’s so versatile. I’m in a similar spot to you – I haven’t quite gotten the handle over it, but I’m just a hair away. I should be able to get it before the week is out.”

“What’s the spell?”

“What’s yours?”

Damien grinned. “Damn, that does take the fun out of it, doesn’t it? I guess we’ll just have to wait until we’ve both figured them out.”

Sylph nodded. “I had another question, actually. This one is for Henry – when I initially got my new magic, you said to avoid any cultivation boosting herbs. I believe that my body has acclimated to the Ether, so can I start using some of the herbs again?”

Henry rose up within Damien. The boy mentally stepped to the side, giving the eldritch creature permission to take over his body – not that he needed it.

“If you’re no longer having difficulty controlling it and feel that your core isn’t leaking energy, then there shouldn’t be a problem,” Henry said. “Both of you should be getting close to core evolution anyways.”

“Evolution?” Damien asked, temporarily taking control of his own mouth again.

“When your core and body are both completely permeated with Ether, your core can evolve. It grows larger and your magical strength grows as well. It doesn’t happen often, and the process isn’t generally enjoyable. It’ll give you a significant boost in strength, though. That’s likely why the upper year students are so far ahead of Year Ones.”

Sylph nodded her understanding and Henry slipped back, giving Damien his body back. Before they could say anything else, there was a knock on the door. Damien blinked and walked over, pushing it open to reveal Delph.

“Professor Delph!”

“Damien, Sylph,” Delph greeted, stepping past the boy and into their room.

“What’s going on, Professor?” Sylph asked.

“More than you could imagine,” Delph replied, his brow darkening for a moment. “But don’t worry about that – I’m here on school business.”

“What about it?” Damien asked suspiciously. “Don’t tell me there’s another fancy quest that might get us killed.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Delph said. “I told you not to do it. And no, this isn’t about a quest. It’s about the class final. In order to take it, you need to meet some baseline requirements. Have your bracelets been updated recently?”

“We got the automatic ones,” Damien said.

“Perfect. Please hold out your hand.”

Damien did as the professor asked. Delph touched his bracelet to Damien’s, then repeated the process with Sylph. The man stared off into space for a few moments before nodding.

“This’ll do. You’ve both reached an acceptable level – but don’t let me catch you slacking because of that. Doing well now doesn’t mean you’ll pass the class. It’s all about succeeding on the final.”

“Understood,” Sylph said.

“One more thing,” Delph said, a small frown crossing his face. “With stats at this level – you two haven’t gone through core evolution, have you?”

“We haven’t,” Damien confirmed, briefly wondering if Delph had somehow overheard their conversation. They hadn’t been talking loudly, but the man was an enigma.

“Then it’s reasonable to expect it to happen rather soon,” Delph said, pressing his lips together. “What inconvenient timing. This normally doesn’t happen until midway through Year Two. Trust me, you don’t want core evolution to happen during your finals.”

“Can’t we control when it happens?” Damien asked.

“You can make it start earlier with magical herbs, but it can also start on its own,” Delph said. “And if it starts, there’s no stopping it safely. Wipe that panicked expression off your face – this isn’t that big of a deal. We’ll just force the evolution to happen early.”

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