Chương 58: Chapter 55: Categories of Abjuration

The good thing about having a competent akyromancer partner for home chores was that they were capable of just annihilating any trash or grime. Washing the dishes? Instantly clean. Cleaning the workshop? Spotless, though you still need to manually set everything back to its place, of course. Doing laundry? That was certainly Nolotl's favorite.

The Void Tower, due to its peculiar spatial and mind-gnawing setting, didn't have a laundry system, meaning that students and staff had to either manually clean their clothes or personally deliver them to the Central Tower for cleaning. But as stated before, it was a rather simple task for akyromancers. Apparently, any field of cleaning was within their first years of instruction.

All of this meant that Nolotl didn't need to go back to the Information Tower or send a Simulacrum to bring his stuff as he could just do with his current clothes as Beta could clean them with so much as a sway of her hand. It certainly helped that as an avian terian Nolotl didn't sweat, meaning that most of the stuff in his clothes was dead skin or dust.

He had already gotten many questions from other people about reusing his clothes as not everyone was crazy enough to have a wardrobe full of the same outfit, but now those voices could be ever-so-slightly justified. Only barely, though. Technically speaking, his clothes had never been this clean before. And going back to chores, Nolotl was engaging in his own: cooking.

As Beta had quite literally everything inside her Inner Abyss —something he had personally experienced—it was quite simple to cook anything he set out to do. Which was becoming easier and easier with each passing day as he now had confidence in his cooking skills after nonstop weeks of cooking for two.

This was his second day with Beta and still within the first week of the loop and the woman had yet to teach him anything, but Nolotl had enough time to entertain himself by practicing cooking, prime number exercises, and reinforcing his singing abilities. Ode to Healing Silence was far from a powerful spell, but the fact that it did so much and it was basically free of cost made it a versatile tool.

Whilst he was currently in the middle of a tortilla-making round—he would store them in Beta's pseudo- Inventory and use them throughout the loop as the akyromancer didn't have literally everything inside—Beta was studying all of the books Nolotl had to offer her. With his true form, the twiceborn just summoned all of them in one go and constantly paid a minimal tax to keep the hundreds of illusions summoned.

The claire-obscure woman did have bookshelves on her Inner Abyss so they ended up filling one of those with all of the readable illusions. Though Nolotl still needed to manually target Beta with Thought Projection to make the books more tangible. The akyromancer accepted that limited use of the Boon, but she still refused any infusion of memories. After all of the events with the Ehecatl, Nolotl didn't blame her. Information Alignment increased by 0. 0001%.

Nice, Nolotl thought to himself as he flipped the tortillas. The lowest unit of detectable thaums, but I will gladly welcome any progress towards my Information Alignment. I never want to get in a situation as precarious as before. It didn't help in the slightest that because his outrageous Alignment Nolotl would advance way faster in any other element that wasn't Information. He was well into the zone of diminishing returns, only receiving one fourth of the Information Alignment he should be recieving.

And it would only get worse with time. Prime number exercises constantly took longer to calculate, but they were pretty mindless thanks to the unique brain structure of gnosiamancers, which made for a nice distraction while cooking.

"I'm getting hungry with that smell," Beta commented without removing her eyes from the illusory book.

"Can you make actual food instead of preparations?"

"Sure, can do. Just take some vegetables. Maybe even some food if you want. Today I'm making itacatls." Technically speaking he wasn't making actual itacatls as those tended to be made with smaller tortillas and meant to be eaten from a single bite, but everyone called them that way regardless of their ancient military origins as packed food.

"Not that I care as I will eat anything, but what are these itacatl?" Nolotl almost jumped in joy. Not because Beta showed some minimal semblance of interest, but because she pronounced the 'tl' correctly. Sure, she didn't know how itacatl was written, but the Tezlan had seen so much butchering of his language that seeing it pronounced well just filled him with joy.

"Basically a sandwich but with a whole tortilla," the terian explained as he picked up the vegetables that poured out of the gaping void mouth that floated in the middle of nowhere.

"I've heard that they call them 'tacos' here after one of the earlier explorers misheard the word, but it's not like I've seen anyone selling them."

"Yeah, I've never heard that term. Neither means anything to me," the akyromancer shrugged.

"I guess the word sounds similar?" Itacatl was pronounced itacat so there was truly a similitude with the word 'taco'. Nolotl blamed the confusion of the 'a' with an 'o' due to the innate emphasis on the 'tl' that not many Originals comprehended, the sound completely alien to the common tongue. With practiced effort, Nolotl started chopping the vegetables. Perhaps he was a spearman, but his prowess with the knife was certainly increasing with such seemingly innocuous task.

He eventually picked up a tomato that Beta has taken out and partially cringed as it wasn't a vegetable but a fruit, but chopped it nonetheless. Perhaps not to put it directly onto the sauté but instead to make a salsa on the side. Soon enough, he was done. Making the tortillas was always the most time-consuming part of the process for these foods after all. Nolotl carried a whole tray full of with 30-odd itacatls to the workbench they had always eaten on.

I guess we have just started eating here for the time being, he pushed those dark and annoying thoughts aside and beckoned for the akyromancer's attention. Not that Beta needed much as she was already ogling the food. Without caring about getting burned, Beta picked up an itacatl and shoved it inside of her mouth.

"Mm, decent," Beta said plainly before shoving another one inside her mouth. Nolotl smiled at those words, nearly drowning it the copious compliments. The "Daughter of Nihilism" was gluttonous in nature and she preferred quantity over quality, but the fact that she had bothered to comment on the food and then ate it at a fast pace told "Quickfingers" enough of what he needed to know. The terian barely had three itacatls before the tray was completely empty.

Considering he had made them big-ish, he was more than satisfied with that quantity.

"Your limitless stomach always surprises me," he commented with his head resting on his palms, Beta finishing her last bite in the meanwhile.

"…you've seen me eat before," she stated in confusion.

"Of course, I already told you I've cooked for you," Nolotl responded.

"Yes… but it's weird seeing how true that is. Your… gaze tells me that you have a lot of experience seeing me eat. It's… something. I can't find the words for it." Gazes again, the diviner pondered. Does your judgement work throughout them, or are you blind to any emotion without reading someone's eyes? Nolotl obviously didn't ask this aloud as there didn't exist enough trust for that question to even be acknowledged. I doubt even in the previous loop it would've been tolerated.

"Do you prefer if I didn't watch you eat?" It was strange as the woman didn't have such issues before, but that was an easy concession to make.

"No," she replied taciturnly, not giving it much thought.

"It was just surprising, nothing else, nothing more." He nodded at those words.

"So?"

"So what?" The cook raised and tilted his head.

"Where's the dessert?" Nolotl's eyes shot wide open at that question.

"Is there something wrong with the dessert?"

"No," the terian answered, both aghast and in glee.

"It's just that it's the first time you asked for it. I've made them before, but it was a personal occasional whim."

"I see…" Beta looked away, refusing to look at him.

"Do you want me to whip out something?" He offered.

"…no," she replied after a moment.

"Only have it in mind for the next time. And wipe that disgusting smile from your mouth." Nolotl could only smile even more harshly at those words. Well, that's definitely progress! Perhaps the Beta in front of him was different from the one he knew, but in a couple of days he had made most of the progress that it had originally taken him weeks. Not the same progress as that would be impossible to recreate unless he followed the script to the letter, but certainly not progress for the worse.

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"Instead, we should now talk about your classes," Beta added.

"What about them, Mentor Beta?" He chirped in.

"I have the feeling that it should address me by the surname if you're to use any weird titles, but that would be digressing," the akyromancer sighed, somewhat tolerating the antics of the gnosiamancer.

"I've verified your claims with all of the documents you've materialized, and you showed your utility with them and also your cooking, so it's time to fulfil my part of the agreement now."

"Be my guest," Nolotl nodded. Two days for classes to start is not a bad metric in the slightest, though I guess I could refine that timespan with more loops. I definitely can save one day from the loop itself by abandoning the Simulacrum's hylomorphism. The diviner thought that, but he wasn't that desperate to save days. The fact that he enjoyed cooking so much was enough of a tell. It did help that his previous loop that should have been a waste still grant him a healthy 5% progress on the assimilation.

Not optimal, but it still softened the blow.

"So," Beta stood up from her stool and casually summoned the blackboard he was used to, "how much do you know about abjuration?"

"Mostly what they teach gnosiamancers up to third year," Nolotl explained.

"I don't know how it works in other towers, but we're taught every generic casting school at least to the cantrip level in mandatory classes. Students of my age should be starting now to specialize a bit but…" he pointed at himself with open palms.

"Yes, few empyreans chose to follow their class schedule after being invested," she mouthed.

"And from what I've heard, it's even worse in towers with lots of students as classrooms can reach the three digits of students."

"The dropout rate at the Information Tower is quite savage, so in my years there's only like forty people at most attending classes."

"I doubt I've seen more than forty students at my tower," Beta stated dryly. The Empyrean of Void's behavior was interesting because a normal person—or perhaps average would be the most adequate and polite descriptor—would have snickered or let out some sound of amusement upon speaking that sentence, yet Beta failed to do so. It was a plain statement, not a jest of any kind. It might not seem like a lot, but those things could get noticed.

"So there's that," Nolotl added.

"I have cantrip-level abjuration knowledge. And to be fair, I couldn't tell you much more beyond that it's the communal school for protection, shielding, and cancelation."

"We're going to have a problem if that's the limit of your understanding."

"What?" The terian softly snapped.

"Your definition is already lacking."

"What even is there to lack?" He professed veritable confusion as his teacher tapped twice on her palm with chalk before turning herself to the blackboard and writing keywords.

"Protection," Beta wrote and said aloud.

"The broadest usage of the abjuration school of magic. If a spell can protect, it usually isn't wrong to consider it's an abjuration. Though, as always, enchanting can technically do anything, but that specific school cheats by making trinkets. A common example of this category is Blade Ward, a low-tier ataxiamancy that makes it hard for unenchanted and non-magical melee and ranged attacks to land. Not a shield, just a general protection that is far from absolute." Nolotl nodded at her words.

He was well aware of Blade Ward's existence, but the issue was that it was an abjuration so simple that minimal enchantments simply nullified the spell. As an ataxiamancy it supernaturally twisted fate to get better odds, but it was limited in its degree of modifications and it only affected plain material objects. So the best case scenario was to use it just to not get stoned to death as Nolotl's tepoztopilli could repel such weak abjuration.

"Shielding," Beta continued with her lesson.

"Unlike protection that usually doesn't have a tangible component, shields act like perceivable barriers. They can be omnidirectional or not. Respective examples would be Mage Armor and Shield. The properties of the shield can change with the spell, but like all shielding, they tend to focus themselves on the broad property of protection. The characteristics of the shields tend to divide between reducing damage or blocking it altogether, with avoidance typically falling into other categories."

The bland names of Mage Armor and Shield already betrayed their usefulness. One reduced incoming damage, though not by much, and the other soaked it up until it broke, just like Beta explained. Hmm, I know they aren't that effective but having them can be plainly useful. But I doubt they could even soak a single strike from the fake Yaxkin. Nolotl had managed to beat the biomancer self of Yaxkin several times now without getting hit, but that wasn't a display of prowess, but survivor's bias.

Because a single hit from the warrior would spell death.

"Cancelation," she wrote again on the blackboard, not allowing him to mussitate his thoughts.

"This branch tends to deal with absolutes and is overall more binary. But, of course, low-level spells won't be able to completely negate an effect in its totality. The better-known spells of this category are Counterspell and Remove Curse. Two spells that can technically do everything but always fall short."

"Certainly the most well-known ones you've mentioned so far," the terian nodded. Counterspell was a classic, almost a bread-and-butter spell. But it run in the same issues as the Remove Curse abjuration that Beta mentioned. One countered any and every spell and the other ignored a whole school of casting, but both had the clear requirement of not being able to tackle stronger spells than the cast counter.

These spells were once that could be 'upcast', meaning that there were more complex versions that could tackle more difficult spells. Alas, learning a ninth-tier Counterspell was a madman's effort considering that at that point of being in front of a ninth-tier spell the best choice was just running away.

"Renunciation," Beta continued and Nolotl instantly frowned.

"Renunciation?" He reiterated, the term being alien to him. Or rather, being too familiar. That was, after all, the actual non-magical application term for abjuration that a common person might see and used in their day-to-day life.

"As the generic casting school of Void, abjuration of course inherits several traits from Void. In this case, the ubiquitous pruning," she nodded.

"Renunciation explicitly demands the caster to avoid certain elements whilst being the target of the spell. Unlike geass, these cannot be forced upon the person so breaking the condition will break the spell, so it's not common to see renunciations be used offensively. Perhaps the most… uncommon of the categories due to its peculiar nature. The most common spell of it would be the photomancy Sanctuary."

"Ah, I guess such a spell would fall upon such category, yes," Nolotl nodded.

"You actually know of it?" His acknowledgment seemed to surprise the pale woman.

"Regardless of how I may look, I'm a priest, so I've heard of it. Especially because once upon a time I was meant to become an astromancer." Sanctuary might not be an astromancy, but it was still a photomancy.

"A spell as powerful as it's restrictive." This time it was Beta who nodded in affirmation.

"Renunciations tend to be the most powerful of abjurations, but their requirements are equally oppressive in kind. Sanctuary forbids both violence, intents of violence, and hasty actions in and in rewards grants… immunity."

"I guess diplomatic immunity is a kind of immunity," Nolotl chuckled. Sanctuary did grant powerful physical and magical defenses, but its main utility was that the caster was heavily impervious to being recognized as a menace. Not quite a mental effect but more of a… natural one. Such effect could be bypassed by monumental force of will, but otherwise, the caster couldn't become the target of any aggression whilst the spell was up.

This spell was mostly used by priest in processions, though it was meant more in a peaceful statement rather than the necessity of protection.

"So these are all of the sub-categories of the school of abjuration?" The diviner asked in satisfaction. The class had already proven quite useful as he eyed to the side. Void assimilation progressed by 1%. It really seems that my main focus should be the generic schools for the time being, he pondered. I did max out the Information assimilation by casting a sixth-tier gnosiamancy, but perhaps that was just overkill and there's not great correlation between the two.

"Hmm, not quite," Beta said both deep in thought and unsure of herself.

"How come?" The akyromancer's doubts surprised him.

"Technically speaking there's one last aspect, but it's hard to classify it as it's own category. Or rather, I personally don't believe it should be considered a category on its own but rather a thing that abjuration can simply do."

"Oh?" That wording intrigued him.

"It won't do me any harm to know about this category so do tell."

"This last category could be called… exemplification?"

"That certainly is a name," Nolotl chuckled softly.

"But is there no other coined term? It seems to me you're making it in the fly."

"It's usually referred to as auras, which… could be an extrapolation a protections differed over a region of space," Beta explained.

"I used the term exemplification because… it exemplifies what it truly is: an inversion of Void."

"An inversion of Void?" The more Beta spoke, the more enthralled Nolotl was in this apparent category. The Empyrean of Void nodded.

"You're aware of both the Void's resistance Boon and the existence of the Obscuramancer Title, right?" The Empyrean of Information nodded back." Resistance to Oblivion and the obscuramancers' ability to project their resistances."

"The exemplification—or aura—category spawns from here. Void is about reprieval and pruning, but obscuramancers invert that logic by making themselves known. Instead of hiding away, they scream their existence. That's why I said exemplification. These kinds of spells affect an area around the caster by making themselves known, even if other schools have their own aura-type spells. It's only that they interact a bit more differently, or perhaps closely, with abjuration."

"So a projection of the self upon others?" He inquired.

"Not quite but also not far off," she admitted.

"Perhaps we could say that exemplification is protection of the self by impeding its erasure through inexistence… but that would be plain semantics. The only thing that you need to know is that this could be called a category." Void assimilation progressed by 1%. The Alignment itself seems to agree, Nolotl smiled, greatly thrilled at the quick assimilation notification. A meager and casual conversation about something that she isn't even fully aware has boosted my progress so much…

Perhaps the Boon is telling me that this is my own path to progress?

"What are examples of these types of abjurations?" He didn't hide his interest.

"Mostly everything that has aura on the spell's title," her response betrayed a personal lack of interest and knowledge." Aura of Purity that impedes a lot of status effects, whether corporeal, cognitive, or spiritual; and perhaps Intellect Fortress?"

"This much doubt does not bode well."

"The doubt comes from the fact that any spell I mention is still an abjuration, but perhaps it doesn't necessarily follows the concepts of exemplification but maybe plain protection. Nothing forbids you from applying Intellect Fortress on an area, but I believe the idea with the spell is to have it source from the caster."

"Hmm, and what does that spell do? Because the name certainly sounds interesting." There were some non-official conventions with names words like 'mental' or 'intellect' were related to gnosiamancy 99% of the time.

"Following the principle of exemplification and what I mentioned with obscuramancy, Intellect Fortress is an abjuration that projects the caster's Resistance to Cognitive Harm." Nolotl's brows rose up.

"That sounds like a powerful spell."

"It does have its plethora of caveats," Beta admitted.

"But does it interest you?"

"I mean, technically speaking, it's not that useful to me. But yes, it heavily interests me. If only for a learning standpoint."

"Well then," the akyromancer tapped the blackboard with the chalk.

"Now we know were to start, so let's get down to business."