“One more thing, sorry. That spell you used… you have a contract with the God Phoenix, don’t you?”
Elora smiled. “I suppose the name of the spell gave it away, didn’t it? Keep that to yourself, if you would. There are very few of us with god beast contracts.”
I can think of one more.
“Could you have summoned Suzaku?”
“Ah, I see what you’re thinking.” Elora shook her head. “The god beasts generally don’t allow people to summon them outside of their own spire, even in simulacra form. Exceptions tend to have a cost that’s measured in lives. Even if I’d have been willing to sacrifice myself, I wouldn’t have had enough mana left to manage a true summoning. And a simulacrum of the God Phoenix would have been just as susceptible to his mana absorption as any other summon.”
I nodded at her explanation. “That also means you wouldn’t be able to summon Suzaku if he arrives again.”
“Yes. And, just so you understand, that was a Sapphire-level spell. There’s nothing stronger. Even I couldn’t have cast it on my own.” She raised a hand, showing her single remaining mana crystal ring. “I don’t know of anything capable of doing more damage. We shouldn’t antagonize him again.”
Well, if nothing else, that’s finally some confirmation that Sapphire-level abilities exist. I don’t know if that means there are Sapphire-level attuned, but it stands to reason that there could be.
I rubbed at my chin. “I understand. But I have a feeling that there will be consequences for our fight with Saffron, and I’d like to get ahead of that. If nothing else, Tristan needs to be aware of what happened.”
“You have a way of ensuring that, do you not?”
I frowned. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. Now, leave me. We’ll speak again when I’m in a more presentable condition.”
I nodded. “I wish you a swift recovery.”
“For your sake as well as mine, I’m certain.”
I turned to leave. “You’re not wrong.”
When I had a moment alone, I checked Trials of Judgment.
No new replies from Tristan.
I was…angry about that. Frustrated.
Maybe a little scared, too.
Was he failing to reply because I wasn’t important? Was he toying with me?
Or was he in trouble? Hurt?
Dead?
I had no way of knowing.
I wrote him a message.
Dear Mysterious Brother Entity,
Be advised that an agent of the Tyrant of Gold infiltrated one of the households of one of your former allies. The agent has been deterred for the time being, but not without casualties.
A Child of the Tyrant was involved. Saffron.
If you are working with these people, I strongly urge you to reconsider. Saffron was clearly unstable at best.
If you are not working with them…
Be careful.
-Corin Cadence
I had so much more that I wanted to say, but for the time being, formality was a defense for my sanity. A solid shell to prevent my fears from breaking through and ravaging my mind.
And in truth, I still wasn’t sure I was ready for Tristan’s answers.
Most of the next day was painful. Slow. Boring.
I was eager for my friends to get back from the test, but the train schedule meant that they wouldn’t be arriving until late at night.
House Theas seemed a little more “proper” than Derek’s household had been.
They wouldn’t even let Keras and me train on the rooftop for some reason. “There are training rooms for that,” they said.
So unimaginative.
I did spend a little bit of time practicing, but I didn’t have the energy for much. It turns out that having your ribs broken makes a lot of things more difficult, like just breathing properly. Even with the worst of the damage repaired, it felt like everything hurt for a while.
I focused what energy I could on what Keras and I had talked about — finding a way of fighting that suited me, rather than just copying other people.
I’d been picking up so many new techniques throughout the year that I hadn’t really put much effort into figuring out how I could use my various skills in tandem with each other for a greater result.
The keystone for that was expanding my training with mana threads.
I’d already figured out that I could connect a thread of mana to a shield sigil to recharge it. That was a great start.
What could I do with my other items?
And what else could I do with a shield sigil, beyond just recharging it?
I experimented with a number of different possibilities.
Could I project mana threads at a distance to interact with items I wasn’t carrying?
The answer was “yes”, but my accuracy was terrible. I’d need to practice before it was practical.
Could I make solid mana threads, like how I made mana crystals?
I definitely could, but they were so fragile that they didn’t have much utility. I’d have to practice with that more to figure out if I could make any kind of use out of them.
The biggest find? I could connect two items to each other.
Most items didn’t have compatible mana types, so shifting mana from one place to another wasn’t particularly useful. But for cases like the shield sigils, they were virtually identical.
When I was in a test with the remaining mana of the standard-issue sigil determining my success or failure, being able to near-instantly refill my shield sigil by moving mana from the other sigil would be tremendously useful.
The combat applications were potentially significant, too.
Could I channel mana from an item straight into the aura-generating rune on my sword, changing the element of the aura?
I didn’t have any good way of testing that one. I retrieved Selys-Lyann and tried tinkering with it, but I couldn’t pull any of the mana out of the runes. I still hadn’t figured out how all the runes worked, but that implied that one of them was an anti-tampering measure.
Knowing what I knew now, that wasn’t a bad idea.
If I could figure out how to remotely alter the functions of item runes, someone else could, too.
I spent much of the day working on researching anti-tampering runes.
Eventually, I found a design that wouldn’t allow anyone to modify the enchantments on an item unless their personal mana signature matched the mana stored in another rune.
That would let me continue to tinker with my own items, but prevent any external modifications — at least in theory. Someone could still destroy the anti-tampering rune, or overpower it with a stronger spell, but that would be considerably more work.
I only had time to put an anti-tampering rune on my silver phoenix sigil before evening had arrived and I got confirmation that my platoon was heading back home.
I went to meet them at the train station.
Patrick rushed over as soon as he saw me. “You’re okay!”
I nodded. “Yeah, at least for the most part.”
The others followed right behind him.