Chapter 128: Chapter 123: Student and Teacher

Rose heaved a sigh of relief as Simona was fully cocooned, taking a moment to store it in Dimensional Storage before moving on. The fight had been exhausting in more ways than one; for one, keeping up an aura of untouchability was tiring, and the fight had actually been somewhat difficult, especially after the Stairway to Heaven had been activated.

Keyword somewhat. Rose had slightly higher stats than Simona, and though Simona had theoretically had more battle experience than Rose, Rose almost certainly had significantly more experience against strong opponents than Simona did. And, of course, Rose had trained Simona, drilled all the basics into her; it was a bit of a gamble to assume Simona was still using that foundation and had some of her old habits, however minimal they may be, but it was one that had paid off.

Amelia, I’ve taken care of Simona. Rose called out, utilizing a mental link Amelia had created before they set out.

Who?

The max leveled person.

Oh, her. Right, I’ve got about half of this little camp in cocoons, but I think the rest is taking notice. I have everyone on the side of camp closest to the others, so…go big, let’s get this done fast and I’ll teleport us out.

On it. Rose laid a palm on the ground, channeling her magic into it and growing a series of large wooden roots, each set to seek out the nearest person, cocoon them, and then bring them back to Rose. It was a spell of unthinkable complexity, made possible only by her Primal Life and Nature magic, which allowed her to transform her thoughts into spell effects with unbelievable ease. In fact, Rose was fairly confident that the only other people who would be able to do such a thing were Amelia and the gods.

The roots shot through the little camp they found themselves in, unerringly seeking their targets. It was a strange setup; a camp subdivided from the rest of camp, staffed by people who, according to Nailah, were from a different country altogether, Misthaven. Misthaven was one of the kingdoms neighboring the Sapphire Empire, so their conjecture was that this small camp was full of elites, hurried to the front lines in an effort to shore up the army.

There were several camps like it in the armies they had scried, but this one had been chosen specifically due to the presence of Simona. As one of Rose’s former pupils, Rose knew her Job, her capabilities, and some of her habits, so Rose was pretty confident she would be able to best Simona in a fight.

Ideally, they would have placed Simona under the spell as well, but Amelia had decided that making such a large spell powerful enough to overcome Simona’s Mental Fortitude would be too taxing on her Mana to leave a safe buffer to teleport home at any time in any situation, so it was decided it would be easiest to have Rose attempt to fight Simona first, and failing that, put Simona to sleep afterwards.

But Simona had been…disappointing. Even though it had worked out in Rose’s favor, she couldn’t help but feel like Simona was squandering her potential. She clearly wasn’t being challenged enough at a high level, and as one of Rose’s pupils, that disappointed Rose to no end. Fortunately, Rose had an opportunity to whip her into shape, and she’d have to make sure that Simona’s flaws were corrected.

The first of the roots returned their targets to Rose, and she began putting them one by one into her Dimensional Storage. They’re flowing in now. Rose told Amelia. I estimate…a minute and a half to get all of them. How are things on your end?

I’m invisible and heading back to you now. Amelia replied. A couple of soldiers have been dispatched to investigate, we don’t have much time before they start taking countermeasures, so the sooner we’re out, the better. Can you speed it up at all? If you have to use all your Mana that’s fine, I’ll be at your location in no more than half a minute.

I…don’t know. Rose admitted. Let me try. She placed a hand on one of the roots and channeled Mana into it, willing it to speed up. And, to her surprise, it did; she had expected it not to work, since, unlike the Stairway to Heaven, it was an ad-hoc spell and she had no idea how it was constructed or how to interact with it, but apparently Primal Magic’s rules were even less restrictive than she had expected. Okay, it’s working. Make that one minute.

A little while later, Amelia appeared out of thin air, giving Rose a nod. “Not a terrible spell.” She said. “But I think if I did this…” She trailed off, and there was a pulse of Mana, followed by the root speeding up dramatically. “There we go.”

“What’d you do?” Rose asked.

“Altered the construction of the spell. It had an okay foundation, especially given the scope of the effect, but there were a lot of optimizations to make. Did you practice this spell at all or did you just wing it?”

“I just sort of willed it to happen, I have no clue how it works.” Rose replied.

“Ah, I was like that at first too.” Amelia said, beginning the process of touching each root and speeding it up. “Seems your Primal Magic is just a limited version of what I do. I mean, I doubt you can do everything I can do, but I’m pretty sure I can at least teach you how to add some guidance to your spellwork.”

Rose collected the cocoons as they arrived. “I’m not sure adding guidance to my spellwork will help.” She said. “I was never much of an innovator with magic, I just used what was already available, and I’m not sure I can come up with something on the spot that will be better than what Primal magic gives. After all, you called it “okay”, and that’s some of the highest praise I’ve seen you give magic.”

As the last of the roots deposited its prize, Amelia turned to Rose. “That’s everyone, right?”

“Yes, but I can feel people entering camp.” Rose replied.

Amelia snapped her fingers, and suddenly she and Rose were back in the nearest occupied fort. “No harm in trying.” Amelia said. “And, worst case scenario, we think of some common spells you use, you cast them, I’ll optimize them, and then, as long as you replicate what I do, you’ll have some very efficient spells you can use.”

Rose frowned. “Why haven’t we done this before?” She asked.

“One, I didn’t think about it before.” Amelia replied. “Two, I don’t think the others are capable of the modifications I do to spells, not without some very serious study. Your Primal Magic, on the other hand, already does a lot of those modifications for you, so I think it’s just a matter of teaching you how to control it.”

“H-how did it go, Your Ladyships?” A uniformed woman, the head of the fort, said, panting slightly as she ran up to them.

“It went off without a hitch.” Rose replied. “As planned, we’ll be staying here for an hour or so while Amelia recovers her Mana, and then we’ll head back to the capital.”

“Of course, Your Ladyship.” The woman said. “We have a spot set aside for conversion, we can show you it whenever you would like.”

“Ah, slight change of plans there.” Rose said. “I need to retrain Simona, and I don’t want to separate her from her unit, so I’m going to take them back to the capital with me. If the spot isn’t getting in the way you can leave it, though; other raids will likely make use of it.”

“It is the place we use for all conversions.” The woman explained. “In that case, let me show you to your room, please do not hesitate to call us if you need anything.”

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Simona woke up gradually, groaning slightly as she did.

“Ah, you’re awake.” Rose said. “Good, I wanted to talk with you.”

Simona bolted upright. “We were, I was – what?” Try as she might, she couldn’t see Rose as an enemy any longer. In fact, she couldn’t feel any loyalty towards her old home kingdom, Misthaven. That was unnatural, surely, so she just needed to start compartmentalizing the parts of herself she knew were the same, and –

“Simona, I understand you’re confused at the moment, and you’re welcome to try and resist the mental changes, but you need to know it’s futile. Your stats will not help you here, and even people like Alisha, the queen of Aura, were unable to resist for long.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Simona grunted, trying to discern which parts of herself were still…herself, and which were not. It was a much harder task than she had expected, and she was beginning to wonder why she was bothering; there was far more of herself that was “contaminated” than was “clean”, and at this point she wasn’t sure how long she would be able to hold on.

Still, she tried anyway, doing her best to ignore the sweet voices that seemed to tell her that she was just prolonging the inevitable and that everything would be much simpler if she just…gave in. But she couldn’t, she had friends and family to protect, and she couldn’t allow them to come to harm, no matter what.

Then again…she was fine, wasn’t she? There had been some mass message broadcast to every major town in which the swarm claimed they were working for the betterment of the world and would do their best to not injure anyone, but Simona had dismissed it as mere propaganda. All the generals and heads of state she talked to seemed to agree with that notion, claiming that those the swarm took were no more than mindless drones with only a façade of their former selves left.

Yet…here she was, grappling with herself. If she was here, thinking, then that meant that she couldn’t be a mindless drone. And, if she was simply a façade of herself without free will, it wouldn’t make any sense to give her the capability to have any questions about this or resist it in any way.

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And if she was herself…perhaps the rumors she heard weren’t just propaganda? It was a line of thought that required her attention, and there wasn’t any way she could do that without giving the swarm a chance, right? Perhaps she had just been refusing to accept anything that didn’t agree with her point of view? But, then again, her mind was different than it had been, so her point of view hadn’t been entirely wrong, either.

“You seem to have come to something of a decision. Are you ready to talk now, or do you need more time?” Rose said.

Simona flinched, having almost forgotten Rose was there. “I suppose.” She said begrudgingly. “But I cannot accept you being the reincarnation of the Ruby Emperor. Even if you have his memories, you are not him.”

“I suppose I’m not.” Rose said. “But, like I said, Reuben was only ever a façade forced upon me by my status as Hero. Underneath it all was me, Rose.” Rose paused for a moment. “Or perhaps it would have just been Rueben. While I certainly have no desire to ever return to manhood now, I cannot say for sure that I would feel the same were things different back then.”

“You could have just stopped.” Simona pointed out. “Who would have told the Ruby Emperor no?”

Rose gave her a sad smile, an expression the Ruby Emperor had never made. “You misunderstand. It was not that I felt trapped by my role, it was that I was physically incapable of doing otherwise. You should be well aware that Heroes cannot hurt people unless it is for the greater good, and this was an extension of that. So many would be hurt if I stepped down, so I couldn’t.”

“And yet, you let Ariana kill you.” Simona said. “You shouldn’t have been able to.”

“She prefers the name Chrys now.” Rose said. “We wish to leave our pasts behind us. And you’re right, I shouldn’t have been able to let her kill me, but I could. I think…I think it was one small kindness the gods afforded me for my lifetime of suffering.”

“She’s here too?” Simona said skeptically. “The Ruby Emperor is one thing, but his daughter? That seems a bit too…pointless.”

“And yet, they allowed it anyway.” Rose said, smiling faintly. “Once again, it was a kindness the gods gave me, allowing us a second life together now that I am capable of being a proper parent.”

“And, let me guess, your wife’s here too?” Simona quipped.

“No.” Rose replied. “Well…not quite. Her reincarnation is, but unlike Chrys or myself, she has no memories of her past life. And, to be quite frank, I believe she’s better for it. That being said, please…give me a chance. I don’t wish to become the man you knew, not ever again, but I’m confident that I’m better for it.”

“You’re just under the same conditioning trying to affect me.” Simona replied. “It’s meaningless.”

“I was, for a time.” Rose admitted. “But no longer. My evolution into this form made me too powerful for that conditioning to properly hold, and, for the first time ever, I am truly, fully myself. It was a scary prospect at first, but I have turned out better than I could have dared to hope. And, after deliberation, I’ve decided to remain on this path because I really, truly believe it is better in the long run; in this case, the ends unfortunately justify the means. If there were another way to achieve our ideals, we would gladly take it, but there simply isn’t.”

“And putting people under this spell, this conditioning, can you really say they’re still themselves?” Simona asked. She was grappling with that same question, and…Rose seemed wise. After all, she had the Ruby Emperor’s memory, and Simona didn’t know anyone wiser than him.

“As someone who was once under that conditioning, emphatically yes.” Rose replied. “You yourself should be able to tell that; I mean, you couldn’t even tell at first, could you? It only became apparent once you thought about your loyalties?”

“I suppose.” Simona said begrudgingly.

“We are different from before, but not worse.” Rose said. “And I would like to take the time to train you once again, get you used to your new body and new capabilities and deal with the bad habits you seem to have picked up in my absence.”

“New…body?” Simona looked down, inspecting herself. She was much the same, but…different. Her skin was glowing ever so slightly, a faint radiance that she could only make out when she was paying very close attention. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be a permanent fixture of her new body, as she was able to stop it from glowing with a thought, her skin returning to its normal tan.

She was bigger, too, in every way. Taller, more toned, a better figure…almost like an idealized version of herself. “What did you do?” She asked.

“I converted you together with some of my fruit.” Rose said, holding out a hand and creating a glowing white fruit on her palm. “The World Tree seems to have some strong light-aligned properties, and I sought to strengthen your Job using it. You are now a Templar of the World Tree, and you should find that not only do you retain all of your old capabilities, you should have more, as well as room to grow. Go ahead, check your status.”

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