21 New Information
A few days later, Ray reached the gate leading to Mythri. There were no troubles the rest of the trip, nothing much could pose danger to him in the forest anyways.
Once he reached the gate, he showed the badge the guard had given him when he left and entered the school.
The first thing he did was to enter the mission hall and receive his point reward for completing the mission. The same busy vibe greeted him as he walked into the building. There weren't even that many people, but the contrast to the dead silence outside made it seem so.
Ray walked up to the front counter and told the girl behind it that he finished a mission.
"Are you sure you finished it? If you're found to be lying, you should know of the consequences." The recipient said.
Ray didn't know about the consequences, but he could guess. "I did it." He blankly responded.
"Give me your card," The girl said.
Ray quickly searched his pockets for the card. He forgot about it at some point during his mission, but surprisingly it was fully intact without a scratch on it. He gave the card to the girl and the girl used some device on the card before giving it back to him. He could sense his card's merit value went from 0 merits to 300. If converted to soul points, he would have 135 soul points now.
Originally he was planning to buy an artifact after completing the mission, but he got lucky and robbed someone for it before even leaving the forest. When he was fighting Zay, he learnt of the usefulness of having multiple spells. Light ray was good, but having a variety is always useful.
With that thought in mind, he left the mission hall and headed towards the market. In around a month he had to go to his teacher again and he wanted to be ready for that. He didn't believe for a second that Magnus was so kind hearted to impart spells with him and let him be.
He entered the market again, this time heading for the large shop with spells. The shop was sectioned into 6 different places for each major element of energy; fire, water, earth, electricity, light, dark.
By this time he was already devoted to the light path, so he went to the light section without taking much of a glance at the other elements.
The light section was further split into defense, offense, and support. In Ray's eyes, the best defense is to improve your offense! Of course, having defensive spells is always useful, but it lacked initiative. By being defensive, you follow what the other person does.
He scrolled through the spells looking for something that stood out to him. He couldn't buy everything listed since the more destructive spells cost more than what he had. But that was fine with him; since they were more destructive, that also came with the downside of using more energy.
After browsing for a while, he found a powerful spell that he could also afford. It read, "Light Pillar. Summon a pillar of light from the ground to disintegrate everything within. Medium energy requirement, high damage. Approximately 3ft x 3ft area."
It was high damage, and didn't cost an abysmal amount of soul points. It also added variety to Ray's arsenal; it was perfect. '130 soul points… not that bad' Ray thought while inspecting the spell.
He went to the front of the shop and asked the receptionist for the spell. The receptionist came back with a normal looking piece of paper, to a regular human at least. Ray could use his aura to see the magic inscriptions on the paper.
He took out his soul point box and his merit point card, then gave it to the receptionist. After checking both of their values, she nodded in approval and took back the 300 merits he just earned and 100 soul points.
Ray grabbed the spell papyrus and left the shop for his house. He didn't have too much time left until Magnus called him, so he wasted no time. He sat down on the floor in his house, and put the papyrus in front of him. After making sure everything was ready, he started his training.
A month passed by quickly in which he learnt light pillar, and practiced it once on a beast in the forest. Just one attack used up half of the energy he had, but its effects were outstanding. The only monster he managed to find was a rat monster, although it didn't last long.
He cast the spell right underneath the rat making a wide pillar of light erupt from underneath the ground. Theoretically, he could keep the spell going as long as he wanted, since the spell isn't a projectile but something he kept channeling. (A.N. I'm going to use 1 small spell as the base metric to quantify energy usage) Each second took 1 energy to maintain, and it took 2 seconds to disintegrate the rat into oblivion.
Against an intelligent mage, the results obviously wouldn't be as good. But if they were too slow and couldn't dodge in time, they would be lucky to survive the encounter.
He looked around more, but didn't find any other monster in time. 'I should get going. I'll miss meeting up with Magnus at this point' Ray thought.
He had been keeping pretty close to the school since he knew he would have to come back soon. So he made his way back to the school, then towards the dark room he was initially teleported into.
As he was walking to the building, he saw Zack and 2 apprentices following him. Last time he saw them there were 5 people in their group, now there were only 3 left.
Ray didn't say anything, and pretended to ignore their existence. When Zack's group saw him, they also didn't bother doing anything to him. Either they didn't care about him anymore, or they were smart enough to not try anything when Magnus was most likely here.
Ray entered the building, followed closely by Zacks group into the dark room. When they arrived, a dim light turned on revealing Magnus in his full glory. He quietly waited until the apprentices sat in their seats, then began talking.
"It's good to see you back, it seems you all made significant improvements. I suppose the deaths of your friends motivated you further." He said with a light chuckle.
Zack and his group frowned slightly, but didn't dare to say anything to Magnus.
"I suppose I'm required to teach you about becoming an official magus." he continued after watching the apprentices' reactions. "When you're an apprentice, all you need to focus on is using energy to convert your soul to be more compatible with the plane, and to strengthen your soul. But to take it one step further and reach a qualitative change, you need to become completely compatible with the plane." He paused again to look at all the apprentices, then said, "You are all level 2, or recently level 2. You have two options; the first is to become an official magus as quick as possible, in other words keep training as you do now. The second is to take it slow, and build a foundation for becoming an official magus. When you turn from an apprentice to an official magus, you need to choose one element and burn away all parts of your soul that aren't the element you choose. This is the only known method to become completely compatible with the plane. If you train like you do right now, you will quickly become an official magus, but you will be left behind with a weaker soul after having to burn away all the useless elements. But if you train slower and only use one element, you will have a much stronger soul when becoming an official magus because you will have to burn much less."
"Now, you may be wondering, why would I take you disciples and give you these spells and information for free? Your suspicions are right, it's not free. We will immediately set off for the royal capital today, and you will all prove your worth as a mage to the council of Valier. You don't need to worry about why; when you become an official mage, you will learn about this yourself. But to repay your debts to me, you will be fighting in my name as my students. Understood?" He said without leaving any room for disagreement.
The apprentices replied, "Understood!"
He smiled then said, "Good, pack everything you need. Come back here within an hour, we will be leaving promptly. Don't be late unless you want me to hunt you down myself."
