Chương 259: Message

Arica departed the following day, having made recordings of Damion's spatial artifact's enchantments, as well as taking ample notes. The existence of such a high-capacity spatial artifact was revolutionary to the artificing community and she could not get back to her master fast enough to share with him the discovery. The rumors of the Fontane's having made a breakthrough in the art of creating spatial artifacts appeared to have now been confirmed.

Of course, Arica had no idea the rings Damion had gotten from the Fontane brothers were ordinary spatial artifacts and the ring she had examined was actually from an alien race. Once she got back to her master and they began experimenting with the enchantments from the Iblis spatial artifact, it would only be a matter of time for their breakthrough to be announced. Then it would not matter if the Fontane's had really made a breakthrough or not, everyone would assume they had and now someone else had.

When classes resumed at the beginning of the new week, Damion found himself sitting in Mage Teft's classroom, listening to a lecture on forbidden types of magic.

"Certain types of spells are considered restricted, while others are considered forbidden. Any spell that actively harms its caster as part of its effect is considered forbidden."

"Why would anyone want a spell like that?" Damion asked. He could not fathom why anyone would want to use a spell that hurt them when casting it.

"Spells of such nature tend to harm because the power they wield is superior to a normal spell. In exchange for damage to one's self, the caster is able to cause much more harm to their target than they normally would."

"Still think I'll pass. I don't fancy spending a lot on potions or walking around all the time with a healer to fix me up after using one of those."

"That is good, because with many forbidden spells, the damage cannot easily be reversed."

"What about restricted spells, what makes them restricted?"

"Restricted spells are ones that can easily get out of control if the caster loses focus. One such spell, I think you have heard of recently, is Frost Fire."

"The spell that killed Theodore Bianco."

"Yes. Frost Fire, is an ice flame that as it freezes it consumes. If the caster is not careful and does not maintain absolute focus on what the Frost Fire is freezing, the spell can easily get out of control and kill the caster. When that happens, then it takes an equally powerful Ice mage to take control of the Frost Fire to put it out."

"The spell won't just run out of mana?"

"The spell feeds itself. It consumes what it freezes to expand further and then consumes more to expand further. It is possible to starve the spell out, by removing everything in its path, but it is more reliable for a stronger mage to end the spell with their own Frost Fire." Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"What tier is it?" Damion asked. Even if it was a forbidden spell and would likely ruin any Demonic Beast he cast it on, he felt it would be a good spell to have on hand to defend himself against people stronger than he was.

"It is a tier 4 spell."

"Any chance of me learning it?" As hopeful as he was, Damion doubted the answer would be yes.

"The spell is tightly regulated. Silver Spire will only allow a student to learn it if they have proven their ability to control their spellcasting to a very high degree. And they must pledge ten years of service to the school."

"Well, I guess that is not happening. What about affinities, are there any forbidden or restricted affinities?"

"The Unholy affinity, while perhaps aptly named, is not an opposite affinity to Holy. It is actually an entirely independent affinity that focuses on the reanimation of corpses."

"You mean like the undead, the skeletons and such that can be found in the Graveyard dungeon?" Damion asked.

"Yes."

"Then shouldn't those Demonic Beasts have the Unholy affinity and not Dark?"

"The affinity that reanimates the corpse is Unholy, the affinity of the corpse does not need to be."

"Then why are the undead all Dark affinity? Surely, at least some undead should have different affinities."

"Why do you have an Ice affinity?" Mage Teft countered.

"Why certain creatures have certain affinities is sometimes obvious. And other times it is a complete mystery. We may never know why, for instance, some members of families that, otherwise are exclusively of one element, end up with a different element. Take Josephine Caplan, her family is renowned for their Water affinity, but she has the Light affinity.

"Now, back to the subject of the Unholy affinity. While people with this affinity are not considered criminals, they are restricted in what creatures they can reanimate. The reanimation of a human, for instance, is strictly forbidden."

"Is it because people don't want to resurrect the dead?" Damion asked, thinking of his dream the other night.

"Reanimating a corpse is different from bringing someone back to life. A reanimated corpse is able to move and do things, because it is controlled by the will of the mage who cast the spell. There is no life there, no independence. A reanimated corpse is not much different from your Ice Clone spell. There is no spell that can bring back the dead." Mage Teft's definitive stance on resurrection, sapped a bit of life out of Damion for the rest of the lesson.

At the end of the class, Mage Teft handed him a small device before he could leave.

"This is a secure message holder. You will not be able to watch it before you reach B Rank and, if you reach B Rank before you graduate, I recommend not watching it until you leave the school."

"What's on it?" Damion asked as he pocketed the small device that was only the size of his thumbnail.

"Important things that you need to know for after you reach B Rank," Mage Teft told him.

"Don't worry about it too much." Mage Teft's cryptic response made Damion do nothing but worry. He could not help but wonder what secret she had to record on a message holder and restrict its access until he reached B Rank. If it was truly important, why could she not just tell him herself once he reached B Rank. For the rest of the day, Damion spent wondering what was on the message and he could not help but come to the conclusion that it was possibly a magic seal.

There was nothing else he could think that Mage Teft would try to secretly tell him, but if she was gifting him high tier spells, or maybe all the Ice spells the school had, it would make sense for her to tell him to wait until he left the school to view the message. By the time he returned to his dormitory after his spell exercise with Elicia, he had fully convinced himself of the contents of the message.

Satisfied, Damion dove into working on his artifact and was quickly reaching the point where he needed to construct a prototype. The problem was, he could not do that inside his dormitory. If the prototype malfunctioned, it could possibly destabilize the spatial stretching array on his dorm room and that would be disastrous.