Chương 51: Chapter 48: Healing Word

"Do you have any preference for the spell beyond it being a photomancy restoration?" Roxina eyed the blueprints on the counter as they spoke.

"Not really, but I guess having some requirements would ease things," Nolotl eyed a stool, and after a nod from the workshop's owner, he picked it up and moved it closer to sat on it.

"I'll have enough with a first-tier spell, but you could add any requirement. Xenoglossia might be the best." Xenoglossia was, in fact, not the best. All requirements were restrictive in nature, but the least restrictive ones in combat were hylomorphisms. That, however, had the issue of materials being finite in nature and a lot of spells didn't just require a reusable asset like his Simulacrum's board, but a consumable item. Needing to speak in combat was bad, but it beat concentration or cheironomy.

Being an armed mage meant that he didn't have free hands to make gesticulations, so that requirement component was basically out of his reach, even if cheironomy was far more preferred by mages than the expensive hylomorphism.

"You're tying my hands here a bit," Roxina tapped her glossy and pink lips as she pondered.

"They teach us a lot of basic spells on the Light Tower, but it's hard to recall everything. Unlike you," in the sense of gnosiamancers, "my memory isn't the best."

"I can give you a handful of days to think, if you need it," he offered.

"No, no," she swayed her finger in negation whilst pointing at him.

"I won't let you go with your hands empty. Just give me a minute to ponder a bit. Hmm, where have I stashed my pondering orb?" Roxina casually stood up and started looking beneath the counter's drawers.

"You have a pondering orb?" Nolotl frowned.

"Sweet Nolotl, what mage doesn't have a pondering orb?"

"No mage at all?" His frown intensified.

"Huh," the photomancer smacked her lips.

"I think they might've lied to me on the Light Tower."

"Why would they lie about having a pondering orb?"

"To be fair, it's more of the type of lie that you tell a child because they won't understand it if you say it straight," her voice came out a bit muted as she practically shoved her head into the drawers.

"If I had to say, it was just to get us into glassworking as a profession. Photomancers don't have many ways out beyond choosing to be healers or crafters. The pondering orb is one of the first glassworks we make due to the simplicity of the work, though the enchantments are far more difficult. It's basically a memory clarity and thought acceleration enchantment to help with… Here it is!" Roxina jumped out of the drawer and pulled out a rather dusty yet perfectly smooth glass orb.

It had a purple cushion underneath it, which softly refracted on the glass' surface. Anyone who looked at it would inevitably and indubitably go "Yup, that's a pondering orb, alright".

"So yeah, that's basically it," she added after dusting it.

"No, no," Nolotl stood up and swayed his hands.

"That's not basically it. What you said is very important. What was that about thought acceleration?"

"Oh, it's way less significant than it sounds, it only accelerates speed of thought by 10%, which ends up feeling like a bit of clear-headedness, but that's it."

"Roxina, 10% is a lo-""Roxy," she pouted.

"Roxina, 10% is…"

"Roxy," the photomancer interjected again.

"Are you going to give up?" The gnosiamancer asked in annoyance and she just looked at him with a smug smile, prompting a sigh from him. I only do this because of the loop, but this is a massive disrespect to the concept of naming in general.

"Roxy, 10% is a lot for a gnosiamancer whose base value might triple that of another mage of the same standing," the diviner stated harshly.

"Hmm, I guess people did use in times of yore pondering orbs in their off-hand to cast spells…" Roxina casually continued as if nothing had happened, but she now had a massive smile on her visage.

"But at the same time, that can be said about wands and staves, and you're not seeing anyone use them now, do you?"

"Because we're not at war?" Nolotl replied as a matter of fact.

"Using foci for spellcasting kills your growth, so it only makes sense to use them when you might not have any growth in your future." That was the whole reason why Nolotl hadn't even thought about equipping himself with artifacts or enchanted items. Mages who used them tended to depend too much on them to cast, which atrophied their skills to use magic without them. Due to the nature of the loop, it wouldn't be insane to say that such items might even be poison to him.

There was no reason to enchant anything that wasn't his own mind.

"I guess that's true," the Tamorean shrugged.

"I'm so used to selling items to non-mages that I forgot about that angle. So you won't like having your own pondering orb? It was a multi-month project for acolyte me, but now I can have them in a couple of days."

"No, thanks. I prefer my magical materials to be components and not foci." As the total celestial alignment had forced him to perform rituals every handful of weeks, Nolotl had become somewhat proficient in just having casting materials with him at all times.

"Oh, well. Your loss," Roxina hovered her hands over the pondering orb.

"Give me that minute I promised to refreshen my mind." The Tezlan prince shrugged and crossed his arms as he waited, indulging a in his prime number game to… Fuck! He cursed as his mind was forcefully reminded of The Game, inflicting him a trivial amount of psychic damage. If anything, the annoyance at having lost The Game hurt more than the actual damage, but that didn't annul the fact that infohazards were annoying to deal with at best. At least I've managed to keep my cool.

I would've hated to explain to Roxina why I suddenly jolted. Though I guess she's too focused on her pondering orb to notice my hijinks. Nolotl continued his prime number gnosiamancy exercise as the photomancer pondered her orb, leaving him with the exhilaration of finding a new prime number which was big enough to need a full booklet to be written. Alas, he was still far away from his prime numbers being sizeable enough to fill whole murder-weapon books. Perhaps in the future.

"Okay, I think I've got something," Roxina snapped out of her ponderation, taking her hands out of the pillowed glass.

"Honestly, this is only a paramount representation of bad my memory is because I can't believe that I forgot about Healing Word. Such a popular spell too!"

"Is that what you want to teach me?" Nolotl groggily brought himself back to the Physicality. I took a lot of mental power to compute so many prime numbers, or rather, big ones. The algorithm to do so was simple, but too computationally expensive for a mortal's brain. Now, a mortal's mind was a whole other subject.

"Yeppers," the tanned glassmaker said.

"I don't have a copy with me so I guess that would be the end for today's session, though."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm already asking about it at the Archives."

"You're what now?" Roxina squinted at him.

"Shh, I'm talking with a librarian," Nolotl sushed her. Even though the previous loop had allowed him to practice a lot with the Simulacrum, it was still hard to simultaneously move two bodies and process the sensory output of both. Yet again, an additional mind would've helped with that. Back in the Information Tower, a librarian politely guided him to a section full with Light spellbooks on the lower floors of the Archive.

Well, the librarian's spell did as you could tie divinations to other people easily with their consent. His cyan self simply defenestrated himself without a window but rather a banister and landed on the appropriate floor with a backflip. It was a completely mandatory one. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. From there, he picked up the correct spellbook with telekinesis and opened it, carefully passing through the pages.

"So a tier one spell?" The real Nolotl asked back at the workshop.

"Wait wait wait!" Roxina thrashed her hands around.

"What have you done to know that? And what was that about talking with a librarian?"

"So I've used my Simulacrum to-""You have a Simulacrum?" She squinted inquisitively, her gaze telling him enough of her thoughts without any need for Lesser Read Thoughts.

"Not Simulacrum Simulacrum that you're probably thinking, but rather a toned-down version that only projects information. I already had it summoned and between the fact that it technically has infinite range and that the Information Tower acts like a lighthouse on the Cognition, it's rather easy to constantly have access to it."

"Huh," the Empyrean of Light mouthed.

"And here I was already thinking that you made this whole teaching ordeal because you wanted to spend more time with me because apparently you had the capability to cast a high-tier transmutation."

"I mean, healing spells aren't transmutation ones."" Au contraire, Nolotl," Roxina used a common northern phrase, but she butchered it as it came out with her Tamorean accent. At least the Tezlan caught the meaning." Mend Flesh is a transmutation spell that's used for healing, though I guess that's more of a surgical spell than an actual healing one, but it still does heal!"

"Yeah, I rather not command my flesh if possible. That sounds too easy to mess up."

"Tell me about it," she rolled her eyes a bit.

"Anyhow, so you have the spell's content in front of you?"

"Yup, but give me a minute," Nolotl started pushing mana to his tattoos, their silvery streaks starting to illuminate gradually though it took a while to become apparent as the workshop received a lot of natural light. As tedious as harmlessly unleashing his true self was, at least it didn't bite into his very limited maximum power time.

The countdown only went down when his animal forms fully materialized and the moment he decided to chain them again the timer stopped, no matter if the forms linger for a handful of seconds. Not that he needed more than that. Roxina's eyes shot wide open as her fellow suddenly spawned wings and a feathery crown, but she was even more stunned when that transformation reverted as soon as it was done.

"I saw your terian form when you became an Empyrean a while ago so I knew that you were a bird, but is this some sort of mating ritual I'm too unfamiliar with to understand or am I missing something?"

"You're missing that," Nolotl pointed at the counter as now an open book lay next to the pondering orb." Oyah?" Roxina mouthed in interest at the item that hadn't been there a moment ago. And technically speaking, it continued to not be an item there.

"How have you done that?"

"A combination of my Thought Projection Boon and the quetzal aspect of my lineage that allows me to make Light-based illusions without depending on the Alignment itself," he explained.

"You can interact with it, but it's not physical. It's more like the illusion—divination, technically speaking—can read your intent and shuffle the pages in response to your movements."

"Huh, neat." The thing about magic was that it reached a point where complicated and bombastic spells failed to garner as much interest as a parlor trick. The fact that the book was no spell in the typical sense of the word was also interesting, however. Roxina read the contents of the illusory book, her fingers softly displacing the pages with near to no force yet the book still made its own efforts to skip through the next page.

"Yep, that's definitely the Healing Word spellware. Do you want me to guide you through already?"

"I would appreciate it, yes," Nolotl walked up next to Roxina and reread the contents of the spell's abstract. Name: Healing Word Schools: Photomancy, Restoration Requirement: Xenoglossia *Effect: Upon completing the chant, fill up the a biological creature within your speaking range with vigorous and vibrant energy, mending minor wounds and easing some of their exhaustion. The longer the chant is, the greater the effect, up to a certain point.

Any creature that is harmed by Light and hears the word will have its exhaustion increased, regardless if it was the specific target or not. *"I don't understand how you make it look so simple," Nolotl sighed in exhaustion as the sun was threatening to set for the day.

"Isn't your light supposed to be offensive?"

"The fact that the destructive nature of Light is amplified by the path of Materialism doesn't mean its creational properties are lost to me," Roxina explained whilst tapping the counter. The good thing about Healing Word was that thanks to its exhaustion-easing factor, one didn't need to be hurt to get healed by the spell, which allowed Nolotl to be its target.

As stated by the restoration's abstract, Healing Word worked by infusing vibrant energies into a creature, which basically translated into some soft bioluminescence that had healing properties. The light produced by the words of healing almost had a lemon hue to them, granting a thin veil of light that became far more prominent and tangible on the most afflicted parts.

Whilst the photomancy restoration was a first-tier spell, that still meant that Nolotl had no proficiencies with it, which resulted in a far harder time to learn it than it would with the likes of Vacuous Filtration. The spell itself wasn't strong either, but having at least one healing spell in his repertoire was vital. Though the mana cost was bound to get astronomical due to his low Alignment and lack of proficiencies.

"I hate this type of 'instinctual' magic, how is it that reciting some psalms does not produce the desired result?" The gnosiamancer protested. Healing Word didn't require concentration or a full song like Ode to Silence and instead just a series of psalms that were noted down on the spellbook. They could get rather lengthy, but the shortest one was a single sentence, even if the effect was bound to be minimal.

"In that sense, it's gnosiamancy that I don't like," the photomancer smiled.

"It's a bit boring that each spell is a recipe. Where's the beauty of whimsy and doing things by yourself?"

"It's called designing your own spells," he countered.

"Ah, but that's a difficult and time-consuming task," she swayed her finger in negation.

"If you got to the correct state of mind, it wouldn't be as difficult." As much as Nolotl desired to design his own spells, it was a chore doing so any time soon. Not because it was a lengthy process as Roxina had said, but because he still didn't have enough knowledge of magic and Alignment as a whole to do so. He might be an Empyrean but that only meant that he was the strongest of the students. And a student was still just that.

He was certainly ahead of the curve of his year, but most of his strength came from combat rather than theory. As easily as it would be to sweep the floor against postgraduates, the same could be said about them in an academic competition. His knowledge still had lots of lagoons. With some luck, the loop will slowly drain them.

"And what even is that correct state of mind?" Nolotl recriminated.

"I dunno know," Roxina shrugged.

"It's quite a person-to-person basis. What works with me might not work with you. But hey, you're making more progress than first-years with the spell, and it's not like you're old yourself. You're closer to first-years than postgraduates."

"I guess," the diviner sighed. But that gap is closing with the time loop. I've been here already more than half a year, so I'm bound to become 20 soon. And judging from the events of the zeroth loop, status-readings show your mental age rather than your physical one. Nolotl expected at some point that his status sheet would should a 20 on his age rather than 19, and rather soon at that.

"I was complimenting you here, you know?"

"It felt more like a back-handed comment," he replied.

"Telling me that I'm doing better than acolytes is not the compliment you think it is."" Au contraire," Roxina butchered the pronunciation of the foreign phrase yet again, "these acolytes trump you over in Alignment and they have a proficiency with the spell. If we compare both, it's like they are learning cantrips and you're learning a second-tier spell."

"I guess," Nolotl added with the same lack of emotion.

"I'd prefer if you weren't imitating Beta," she pouted.

"I wasn't," he squinted.

"But why? Do you have a hate-hate relationship with her like Paizon and Nina or something?"

"Nope, not at all," the Empyrean of Light swayed her head, her ponytails lagging behind.

"I meant in the sense that it feels like an insult towards her."

"Oh, fair enough," the Empyrean of Information straightened his back.

"But I was being honest when I said I didn't do it on purpose."

"It certainly didn't feel like it, but oh well, we're getting too morose over here," Roxina stood up and stretched her arms over her head.

"Tomorrow's the start of the weekend, so I close shop earlier today. I will have to see you out."

"Sure, no problem. How do we handle the following lessons?" He stood up too.

"Just drop whenever you please, but have in mind that I won't be able to help you when there are clients present or I'm working on commissions. The forge's heat will kill you. Literally."

"Yeah, I'm quite aware of the brutality of photomancers' forges. But maybe I have an answer to that."" Oyah?" the tanned Tamorean paid close attention.

"I could come down and use Simulacrum to practice with you. I could even leave it here if you allow me."

"Excuse me, Nolotl, but I'm not allowing you to leave your projected body on my workshop overnight," Roxina squinted at him.

"Fair enough," he peacefully raised his open palms.

"It was just a proposal." And honestly, you're more sane on turning it down unlike a certain someone. Nolotl was thankful that Beta had allowed his Simulacrum to stay with her in the previous loop, but she had been rather… lenient to having such projection in her own chambers.

"Also, you can cast spells through that budget Simulacrum?"

"I must reiterate that, technically speaking, what I'm using is the actual Simulacrum spell and not some cheap copy," Roxina wasn't amazed by the clarification, "but yes. I can cast any spell through it whilst it doesn't require concentration. And I guess hylomorphisms too, but I feel like there are several ways to counteract that."

"Certainly a fun spell to toy around with, but for the time being, study Healing Word by yourself," the glassworker guided him to the door as she remotely turned off the lights of the workshop.

"I don't want you coming here every day either, understood?"

"Perfectly," Nolotl answered once they were outside and Roxina was locking the door. He was wholeheartedly satisfied with filing one of the widest gaps in his magical repertoire. Though by the looks of it, it would take some time.