Chapter 89: Chapter 88 – Friends

[I already have the scanners and the drones to carry them. We'll just need to finish enchanting this place a bit and we can deploy.]

As Dream overlooked the facility, his mana was still covering the area and enchanting everything. Sophia was applying stealth and reinforcement enchantments, ensuring that nobody would be able to find this place.

Once she was done, she picked back up all the dirt and rock that had been removed and moved it back on top of the facility, She began to bury the area and pack in the dirt, making it look like this place never had a huge crater in it. One couldn't even see the gates of the facility.

"...What kind of scanners and drones are we using?"

Dream landed on the ground while Sophia pulled out the scanner.

[The scanner is just one big metal detector. Like what those people use at the beach, except thousands of times more powerful. These were used back on earth and I haven't made many modifications since they're very effective. We'll have drones to fly them to different areas and scan. The scanning process will go on for about a day before we get results.]

"Alright. I have no problems."

[Deploying scanners...]

When she spoke, over two hundred scanners and drones were brought out and sent away. It wasn't long before they disappeared in the distance.

[We'll wait until we get results to deploy the mining teams. Until then, let's get some rest.]

"Agreed."

Dream nodded and turned in the direction of the Spire. It was already night, and he had to wake up for class tomorrow.

...............

........

The next day, Dream woke up and went to his sequencing class. Since he was now planning to test up, he just read through the whole book and practiced its concepts. 

The class was just getting into two-layer circles, but Dream didn't pay any heed and practiced what he needed. During the class, he was pulling out two-layer circles left and right. He even made some of his own, but the others wouldn't know that just by looking.

Unfortunately the book didn't move on to three-layer circles, so he couldn't do much more than that. 

Other than much of the class being stunned, nothing really happened and he moved on to the elemental class. 

In this class, it was much of the same. He scanned through the book and immediately grasped the concepts of controlling certain elements with the elemental mana. The looks on everyone's faces when he practiced a two-layer water circle was priceless.

After the elemental class he moved on to the practical class. In this, he was paired up again with Arrina during their workout. Her competitive nature showed even more as they had a small spar for the workout. But although she had the drive, Dream could see how her ability was lacking. So he actually stopped the spar halfway and decided to work with her.

"What are you doing?"

Arrina tilted her head in confusion after Dream suddenly stopped.

"You need to change the way you do things."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean your magic. Have you ever considered getting rid of your magic circles?"

Dream put up an illusion and sound barrier around them. Arrina didn't notice and was only confused about Dream's question.

"How can you get rid of using sequences? They're what gives us magic."

"Not true. Watch this."

"Whoah!"

After he spoke, Arrina suddenly felt the ground beneath her give way. Her feet sunk into the stone ground and were trapped. At the same time, Dream pulled water from the air with his bare hands and formed it into an ice lance. He shot the ice lance straight towards Arrina's face.

"Ahh!"

With how fast things happened, Arrina could only freeze up in panic. Dream obviously wasn't about to kill her and stopped the lance right in front of her face.

"You don't need magic circles to perform magic."

"H-how..."

"Simple. You control mana with your Will. After sparring for a while, I've come to notice peculiarities in how you control your mana, as well as how it saturates your body. And I think you might have a talent for manipulation."

As he spoke, he released Arrina's feet and evaporated the ice lance. He then walked up to her, taking out a small cube of metal.

"Take this and fill it with your mana."

"Wha..?"

Arrina was confused but still took the cube. It fit into the palm of her hand, and she attempted to fill it with her mana like Dream said.

Dream could see her weak stream of mana flow into the cube. When it was filled, he nodded.

"Good. Now make it hover above your hand. No magic circles."

"...How am I supposed to do that?"

"Use your mana as an extension of your mind. You controlled that mana to fill the cube. Now anchor it to the cube and lift the mana, thereby lifting the cube. In simpler terms, just lift the cube with your mind."

"...I'll try."

She wasn't sure what Dream was blabbering about, but she understood trying to lift the cube with her mind. Concentrating on the mana within the cube, she began trying to lift it.

After a while, she was actually able to lift it above her palm a little over an inch. Though she clearly struggled. And eventually it fell back into her hand.

"...This is useless."

"Says the one who could've been killed by me several times over using that very technique. Look, I know a way that can help you train manipulation. I feel that it would suit you better than using these sequences. It would take a lot of effort, and you might lose progress before you gain it, but you have the drive and it's not like you're that far along with sequences anyway. No offense."

"..."

Arrina went quiet. She wanted to doubt this whole manipulation thing, but she clearly saw how Dream used it and how effective it was. Like he said, with a mere thought he could've ended her. Using no magic circles either. And it all happened so quickly. He seemed like so much more than he really was, and she wasn't in the position to doubt his abilities. But she still had questions.

"Why are you willing to teach me something like this? If it really is as powerful as you're letting on."

"Well, honestly, the whole reason I'm even at this school is to make friends. And I guess I enjoy passing on knowledge to others. So what better way to make friends than helping someone? You seem like a good person, and I'm able to help you gain power. So why not?"

"...You're not looking to put me in debt to you?"

"Not being insulting or anything, but I highly doubt you have something that interests me. Look, I'm just trying to be helpful to someone. That seems to be a foreign concept to many people here."

"..."

Arrina went quiet once more. And sensing her continued doubt, Dream just put it simply.

"Look, I'm offering another way of doing things. It may help you, or I'm wrong and it won't. Either way, there's not really any risk to it. You can take my help or not. I don't mind either way."

"Alright."

Arrina gave her answer with a surprising amount of conviction.

"I've got nothing to lose. So why not. So? How are we gonna do this?"

"Oh, well when do you have free time?"

"During lunch and after 4th class."

"Oh, same. Then we can meet up during lunch and after 4th period. Though healing is my 4th, and sometimes we go to the hospital. Plus the class went for like 3 hours. So we'd need some place to meet. What about the dorms?"

"Dorms?"

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"Ya, that would probably work best. So let's see, we can stay with each other after this for lunch, and after 4th period, you can come over to my dorm. Sound good?"

"Uhh...ok. What's your dorm number?"

"420. I leave it unlocked, so if I'm not there when you show up then you can just show yourself in."

"You let people into your room without you there?"

"No, but it's not like I have anything valuable there. Somebody could steal everything and I wouldn't care. Anyway, lunch is coming up, and you need to rest. So we'll start tonight."

"...Ok"

Arrina nodded. If she was doing something new, she did want to be rested. 

The class ended and lunch came. Dream and Arrina went with each other to the cafeteria and ate before splitting off for their 4th period. Interesting thing was, Mara never showed. Though he figured since he never told her what he did during lunch, she wouldn't know where to find him.

Dream went to the healing class where they went to the hospital again. They did the same things as last time, separating into groups and going off to help patients. Dream met back up with Merlin and Mara and followed them around. Mara also tried to teach him some things as they went around seeing a variety of injuries, but since she was still super shy and quiet, she found it difficult and Merlin often chimed in.

As they were helping a patient, Dream suddenly got a notification.

[Dream. We have our first confirmation of a dig site.]

'Oh? That was fast. Do we know what the material is?'

[From the readings, it's Iron. And lot's of it.]

'How much is a lot?'

[Hard to get an exact number, but from the area it covers, I'm guessing at least several hundred tons.]

'Nice. And we now have the proper facilities to make steel, giving us a supply of materials stronger than titanium.'

[I'm going to begin summoning the necessary equipment. But since you've taken on the role of a sensei with Arrina, we'll have to launch the mining operation later tonight.]

'Not necessarily. I'll just take half an hour to fly over there really quick and set things up when my class ends. My new disciple can wait a bit.'

[Such a good teacher. But that's alright. It won't take much time to set everything up. After tonight, we'll have a mine and a refinery. Maybe we'll be able to find some additional materials from the ore as well.]

'It'll be a good harvest.'

Dream smiled as he thought about gaining some resources. He didn't know everything that he would use it on, but it was nice not having to go and buy it from people. Not to mention the fact that running a little mining operation was pretty cool. 

As the healing class came to an end, Merlin pulled them aside a bit early and talked about their little pairing. 

"So Mara, did you go and find Dream at lunch?" 

"N-no. I didn't know where he was."

"She has different classes and I didn't know where she was either."

"I see. Then Dream, where do you go at lunch?"

"Usually the cafeteria."

"Where in the cafeteria?"

"I'm usually by myself in the back corner."

"Then that's where you can find each other. Ok Mara?"

"O-ok."

"..."

Dream just shrugged his shoulders at this super awkward pairing. He didn't know why Merlin wanted them to hangout so badly, but he didn't have a reason why not. He just went with it.

After that conversation, Mara stayed back as Dream left the hospital. He headed straight for the gates to leave the city.

After he went through and started flying to the facility, he received a call on his bracelet. It was Riddick.

"Hello?"

"It's me."

"Hello."

"Hi. So I talked to Merlin."

"And?"

"First off, if he wasn't 100% sure that we were connected, then he is now. But other than that, that disciple of his has an interesting story."

"What story might that be? Is she a genius or something?"

"Well, medically yes. That's what happens when you've been raised by a medical prodigy like him for nearly 20 years."

"So he's been teaching her since she was a child?"

"He's been more like her father. Not long after I disappeared, he took on an assignment to help out at a nearby small kingdom with some other mages. A section of it had been decimated by some monsters that were being manipulated by criminals. Long story short, a few thousand died and this girls' parents were among them. While he was going through the area, he saw this girl attempting to heal her dead parents with some pseudo-restoration magic. She was only 4 at the time, and he was impressed, so he took her in. The rest is as you can guess."

"...Shit that's dark. He told you all of that?"

"Of course. We're good friends and it's nothing that he needs to hide. Especially now that he knows you're connected to me. He also told me about him trying to pair you two up so she can teach you."

"His attempt at getting her to make a friend."

"And it would be a good friend to make. He told me how shy she was, and it's obviously due to that trauma from many years ago."

"She remembers that?"

"In full detail. It's one of the things he found while teaching her. Her memory is apparently unparalleled, and she learns extremely fast. If that's the case, she would be a good friend for you, once you get past her shyness of course."

"Huh. I mean, I'm not going to make a friend just because she can be useful. I'm not a psychopath."

"I'm not saying you should, and it's nice to hear that you think that way. I'm just saying that a friendship with her has a high chance of lasting. It's hard to be friends with someone who's weak, you'll only split apart over time. But if it's someone powerful, then they can keep up with you."

"...Right."

"Well, that's all I really had to say. In a couple days, I'll get Amitel to ready your advancement test."

"Ok."

"Then I'll talk to you later."

They hung up and Dream went into thought. He hadn't thought about friends and whether they could keep up with him in terms of power. He couldn't argue that they would split apart. It was highly likely. They would go off to do different things. Not to mention lifespan. Someone who's class 4 would far outlive a class 1 or 2. He didn't know by how much, but it could be thousands of years vs hundreds. 

He had never considered it, and it was a new concept. One that he now had to consider. Not that he would avoid making friends because they were weak, but it couldn't be entirely left out. Mindsets change. Even on Earth, people got rich while others didn't. And sometimes that led to people splitting apart, whether it was because of time or jobs. Like if your friend suddenly became your boss. Things might get weird, especially if that same friend ever had to fire you. Not exactly the same situation, but it paints a picture.

Eventually, Dream just dropped the subject. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

[We're here.]

Soon, Sophia called out. He looked down and could see nothing but hills of dirt and rock, but he knew what lay under it, and soon he would be putting it to use.

 

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