Chapter 163: Chapter 163

Damien’s eyes snapped open and Delph’s house swam into his vision piece by piece, as if someone was putting the world back together like a puzzle. He blinked away the powerful dizziness orbiting him.

“Did it work?” Delph asked, apprehension breaking through his normally causal tone.

Damien opened his mouth to say nothing had changed, but the words didn’t come out of his mouth. His mindscape, which should have been empty now that Henry wasn’t currently there, felt energized.

With a start, he realized that he could faintly make out crisscrossing lines of Ether throughout the room. They were translucent and almost impossible to see, but they were there nonetheless.

“I see the Ether!” Damien exclaimed. “Without my mental Energy.”

“Already?” Delph asked, his eyes going wide. “It took me a month to do that! It succeeded!”

The professor let out a gleeful laugh. “This is perfect! Well done, Damien! Well done! Every day you prove that my efforts in you weren’t wasted.”

“Thanks, I think,” Damien said as he rose from the couch. “By the way, I ran into your teacher.”

Delph froze. “What?”

“Your teacher,” Damien said again. “My soul got sucked onto some mountaintop and I met the man that claimed to have taught you.”

“You saw Moon?” Delph asked, all joy gone from his face. He grabbed Damien by the shoulders. “Where? Did you recognize the mountain?”

“On a mountain. I told you,” Damien said as Delph shook him. “It was above some gray clouds and really snowy. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you anything. Why? Is that bad?”

“Not bad,” Delph said, releasing him and frowning. “I haven’t seen Moon for a long time. I honestly thought he was dead. After he taught me direct casting, he said he had errands to take care of and vanished. I was hoping he might have a new technique for me to learn.”

Damien rolled his eyes and the stress that Delph’s reaction had caused him faded. “I thought you were going to say he was evil or something. Well, at least he’s alive.”

“So he is,” Delph said, rubbing his chin. “Fascinating. What did he tell you?”

“Not much, actually,” Damien said. He wasn’t sure why, but something stopped him from reciting exactly what Moon had spoken to him about. “Just to do well in the intramural tournament and keep training.”

“The tournament?” Delph asked, raising an eyebrow. “Interesting. Well, with direct casting, you should have a good chance of snagging one of the Blackmist spots. As for the other schools – well, you should be able to hold your own. There are a few other monsters, but I’m pretty sure you and Sylph are the biggest ones.”

“Noted,” Damien said. “Now, if you could get back to teaching me exactly how to use direct casting…?”

“Impatience.” Delph snorted. “But the hardest part is already done, so rejoice. All you have to do now is very carefully send a simple, one word mental command through that connection and into the Ether. It should react to your request accordingly. Just don’t try it–”

Damien followed Delph’s command, imagining the word ‘gravity’ and sending it towards his connection with the Ether. He wrapped it with his thoughts of how gravity worked, just to make sure it couldn’t be misunderstood. The air around Damien shimmered.

“–here,” Delph finished, moments before every single book, paper, and unfastened object in the room hurtled through the air and pelted into both him and Damien like a flock of enraged birds.

Damien instantly dropped the spell and hardened his mage armor so the objects just pattered against his defenses harmlessly. One particularly offensive piece of paper managed to dance past his hands and poke him square in the eye, eliciting a curse.

“Seriously?” Delph asked, looking around the wreckage in the room as Damien rubbed his injury with a groan.

“You should have said not to do it here before saying what to do,” Damien complained. He straightened up and hid a laugh. “It worked, though.”

“Not exactly,” Delph said, plucking a book from his shoulder and tossing it to the ground. “Unless you were actually envisioning everything flying at you, that is. What did you send into the connection?”

“Gravity.”

“Well, I suppose it kind of worked,” Delph decided. “Could have been worse, at least. Keep practicing. If you can get a basic handle over it, it’ll do you a lot of good in the intramurals.”

Damien nodded. “I’ll do my best. I’m confident I can get at least a little within a few weeks.”

“Good,” Delph said. “Now, moving on – how is your progress with manifesting Henry?”

“He’s working on that on his own,” Damien replied. “He’s pretty set on keeping it secret. I’m pretty sure he’s just bored and wants to surprise me, but I’m confident he’ll have something when it’s needed.”

“So long as you’ve got something to show for your efforts when Dredd comes knocking,” Delph said. He looked around his ruined room again and let out a heavy sigh. “Enough training in my house for today. Maybe forever. I’m going to send you back. Where do you want to go?”

“My room would be–”

Damien couldn’t finish the sentence before the professor flicked him in the forehead, banishing the boy with a flash of gray light. When he shot out from a portal, nearly bowling into Sylph in the process, he could practically see Delph’s smirk in his mind’s eye.

“He is so petty,” Damien muttered irritably as he stood back up, much to Sylph’s amusement. “Although I suppose I did deserve that.”

“Why?” Sylph asked.

“Delph gave me some training and I might have accidentally wrecked his living room.”

“Ah. Yeah, you probably deserved it,” Sylph agreed. “Did you learn anything interesting at least? I can’t imagine Delph would have brought you to his house for normal training.”

“You could say that,” Damien said, a grin forming. “And now it’s my turn to hold something over your head. You’ll get to see it soon enough.”

Sylph groaned. “I guess I can’t complain about that. Give me a hint, at least? I’ll give you one in return – I’ve managed to manifest a combat form with my companion.”

“Oh, awesome!” Damien exclaimed. “That’s great! And fine – mine was a new form of spellcasting altogether, although that’s going to have to stay between us. It’s… powerful. And also a bit hard to control.”

“Interesting,” Sylph said slowly. “Haven’t heard of anything like that before, but the world is a big place.”

“So it is,” Damien said, his thoughts going to Moon. “I better bring Henry up to speed and find out just how much progress he’s had on his end. I’m honestly starting to feel a bit embarrassed, I haven’t made any progress on manifesting him at all. He’s doing all the work.”

You are reading story My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror at novel35.com

“Well, we’ve got a bit of time left before the selection process for the Intramurals starts.” Sylph nodded back at the training rooms. “Henry is still back there. No better time to get started than now.”

He couldn’t argue with that, so Damien bid Sylph good luck and walked over to find Henry. As soon as he stepped into the first training room, his eyes picked up a slight fluctuation in the Ether coming from the second room.

It faded as Damien stepped inside to see Henry’s usual shadowy form covered with eyes and mouths leaning against the back wall.

“You look serious,” Henry observed. “What happened?”

“Might want to put up a sound barrier or whatever you do,” Damien said.

Henry cocked his head to the side but did as Damien requested. He sent a pulse of purple energy out, coating every surface of the room with translucent magic.

“Nice and safe.” Henry looked at Damien with a few eyes. “So, spill. What happened?”

Damien ran through his meeting with Delph and Moon, detailing everything that had happened over the last few hours. Once he’d finished, Henry let out several thoughtful hums.

“He claims to be outside the Cycle?” Henry rubbed the area where his chin probably was. “That’s… concerning. There shouldn’t be anyone or anything other than the Void and the Corruption outside of the cycle.”

“Do you think it’s someone with a disguise?”

“No. This Moon character knew too much,” Henry replied with a shake of his head. “I need to take a look at that new technique of yours.”

He sank into the ground, merging with Damien’s shadow and returning to the boy’s mind. Henry milled around in it for a short while, then went silent.

Henry?

There was no response for nearly a minute. Finally Henry let out a distressed murmur.

“What is this?”

What do you mean? I thought you’d recognize the runes. Do you not?

“No,” Henry said, reluctant to say the words. “Not at all. Many of them are clouded somehow, and I can’t seem to access them no matter how hard I press. The ones that I can see – they’re completely foreign. I’ve never seen anything like this. And yet… it seems familiar.”

Delph has this same type of magic. Maybe it’s that?

“Hmm,” Henry said. He considered Damien’s words for a few moments. “That might be it, actually. His magic was completely foreign to me as well. This technique must be it, but that only confuses me even more. This Moon person – he knows things that even I don’t. That mean’s he’s a being of immense power. It’s hard to believe I haven’t at least heard of him.”

I guess the description didn’t ring any bells?

“Do you have any idea how little that description narrowed things down? Any edgelord can wear a black cloak and cover their face,” Henry muttered irritably. “The difference is doing it with style.”

Wonderful. So all this has done is convolute things even more.

“Pretty much,” Henry agreed. “At least this person seems to be on your side, though. I don’t know how that magic works, but it seems strong. No point doing that for someone that you plan to kill.”

Damien rubbed his forehead and paced around the room.

I suppose so. Do you at least have good news for me? Don’t forget the intramurals are coming up pretty soon.

“I suppose I can show you something,” Henry said, satisfaction seeping out of his words. “Probably wouldn’t be a good idea to hide this up until the tournament anyways. You shouldn’t use a new weapon for the first time in an important fight.”

Henry slipped out of Damien’s mind again, but he didn’t emerge from his shadow. Instead, the eldritch creature seemed to wrap around Damien’s body. Shadowy smoke rose up from him as Henry sank into Damien’s mage armor.

“Why don’t we steal some of our new friend’s stylistic choices?” Henry asked, cackling. Dark tendrils wound through the blue mage armor, turning it black. The shoulders tapered up into points and the cloth grew tighter around his body.

Damien moved around, but it was as if the armor wasn’t even there. It wasn’t restrictive in the slightest.

“Is this your combat form?” Damien asked aloud.

“Damn right it is,” Henry said. “And it’s entirely done through Dark magic. No void traces to be seen. That does limit what I can do a little, but it’s still quite fun. It means I’ll actually get to fight with you without terrifying every mage in the area.”

What can you do?

“For one, I can harden and control the mage armor at will,” Henry said. “That means you don’t have to worry about blocking anything with it. I can handle that. I can also send some basic Dark magic probes out from the back and smack people. Again, nothing too flashy, but it works.”

He demonstrated by creating a thin, shadowy tendril at the base of his armor. It ended in a sharp point and was roughly ten feet long. Henry jabbed it into the stone, leaving a small hole.

That’s honestly impressive. I’m not sure what the other combat forms can do, but I think just having you able to help me fight will be huge. What about the normal manifestation, though?

“Don’t get greedy,” Henry grumbled, pulling his influence back from the mage armor. It returned to its normal blue hue as the companion slipped back into his normal spot in Damien’s mind. “That’s a lot harder. I honestly don’t know if I’ll have much that’s actually useable by the time the intramurals get here.”

Don’t we need both, though? What if Dredd won’t let us take part?

“He will,” Henry said with a dismissive laugh. “Don’t worry. Worst case, I’ll just make it look like you’ve got a normal manifestation. It won’t be able to do anything, but that’ll be enough. Our other abilities should be more than enough to handle any other students.”

If you’re sure. In that case, I’m going to get to practicing again. I want to try and get at least a basic understanding of direct casting before the intramurals start.

Henry nodded and let the barrier drop. He watched Damien head into the first training room, then got back to work himself. There was a lot of work left to do before the tournament came around, and neither of them had any plans of falling behind.

You can find story with these keywords: My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror, Read My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror, My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror novel, My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror book, My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror story, My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror full, My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror Latest Chapter