Chương 332: Chapter 7-330 – Burning the Light and the Dark

They came from very different backgrounds, which might have been the very reason they got along so well. Archangel Gabriel had come from a middle-class family of no particular distinction, blessed with great talent in Light Magic, and was raised in a household that had served the Church of Light faithfully for centuries.

She had been a firm believer in all the good and great things the Church had done, and been selected for her zeal and commitment to those ideals, beliefs that had carried her to the top of the Synod and made her the youngest Archangel ever. Then she had been forced to confront the Truth of why she had been allowed to grow that far, the lethal corruption and heartless fanaticism at the heart of the Synod, and her own destiny if she chose to continue on her path.

Except, it wasn't a fall from grace, it was a rising to it! Ruronalee, or just Alee, had been ushered into power and privilege at the heart of the Acropolis as a child, only to have her foster father heartlessly accused of corruption and sentenced to death by machinations of those seeking the seat of the Goddess of the organization, revealing to her all the rot hidden inside the gentle and helpful façade.

Despite the doom of her patron and sponsor, her own talent was tremendous, and it had sufficed to bring her to the central power of the Acropolis, all the while knowing just what darkness lurked in the heart of it, and even embracing it with Shadows of her own. Learning that she was going to the Netherworld despite everything, a place darker than the very worst of the Acropolis, had finally been enough to exceed even her limits of what she would tolerate or stoop to.

Together, the two young women had burned out the Light and Shadow Elements from themselves, using the discarded power of the other to make the experience less painful, and now they both bore a Typeless Galaxy. It wasn't a true Typeless Galaxy, as it was still affected by their other Elements and so limited the magic they could learn. That had naturally not stopped them at all from immediately delving as deep into Wizardry as they were allowed to do so.

Given they were quite bright, they'd had little problem advancing with leaps and bounds, overwriting the default Mage Class and its minor benefits with knowledge that was completely outside the bounds of everything they had been taught. Gabriel focused on Silver Magic. Buttressed by a supporting Galaxy of extra Mana, her ability to cut off and cut through the spells of others would be unrivaled, even if they were Archangels! Ruronalee, on the other hand, was totally enraptured of Divination Magic.

The ability to go delving for secrets others wished to conceal, or no one else knew, captivated her imagination and satisfied her natural tendencies as an information broker perfectly. And now, here they were today, back-to-back on the Altar of the Broom Closet Pyramid, power coming down around them as I sang the Sublime Chord and the Heavens opened above them. Reaching out together into the darkness there, for new kinds of light!

"You look a little unhappy, Mok Fan," I informed him as I sat down at the table across from him. He was enjoying a large and sizzling hot Chinese meal of spicy shrimp at the Woven Basket, a restaurant in Norport, the northern Portal town, which was the largest and most-developed of the Border Ring cities in the Broom Closet.

"Lady Fae," he regarded me warily as I sat down. It was hard to get much respect out of him, although I got some since I was also his Wizardry instructor when he bothered to take a break from his Stars-cleansing. He was almost done, and so had slacked off some to get a little relief. He probably thought I was here to chase him back to the Pyramid and get him back to work.

"Checking up on me?"

"You think I don't have better things to do than 'check up on you'?" I quoted back at him mildly, and he flushed. He wavered between fanatical cultivation intensity and complete lazy indulgence of the world on what looked like whims. The way I worked and had stuff to do all the time was probably completely unnerving to him... and yet, I somehow still made time to teach him, which had to be done in person since he didn't have a Mark and was not in Allegiance to Coralost.

"Sorry," he half-mumbled, and even meant most of it, plucking up a couple fat shrimp and chewing them down with enjoyment, despite his mood.

"Damn, the shrimp here are good!"

"It's an alchemical derivation of spices, a very toned-down style of combicha sauce." He cocked an eye at me in interest as one of them floated off his plate to my lips, and I took a bite of the four-inch thing. Yes, they were really good. My whole mouth lit up at the prickly heat of the spices cascading over one another.

"Uh, what's combicha sauce?" he had to ask.

"An alchemical cuisine known for its unforgettability and potentially lethally hot spices." He blinked in shock.

"Seriously, if you don't drink the cool-down milk after eating it, you can die of severe gastrointestinal distress... and if you're really tough, it might take a couple of years for you to do so, the whole time period of which you're going to be incontinent, in agony from your tongue to your bowels, and unable to taste any damn thing but the blazing flames all through your system." He looked really hesitant to believe me.

"Seriously, it gets stronger depending on who eats it. The tougher you are, the deadlier it is." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"So, we could eat the same thing, and despite me being tougher than you, all it would do is hit me harder to make up for it?"

"Correct!" I nodded.

"We would have the exact same dining experience."

"Huh." He munched on another shrimp as I slowly finished mine.

"So, why'd you track me down?"

"Just wanted to know where you wanted to go from here. There's still a few months until the travel Conduit you are supposed to be in dumps you where you are meant to be. You also seemed to be down in the dumps the last few days, and I wanted to make sure nothing serious was weighing on you." He got his mopey 'nothing's wrong with me' face on, and I just elevated my eyebrow and pursed my lips just so.

"No, no!" he blurted out, waving his hand. He shoved another big shrimp at me, and I took it carefully from his fingers.

"Don't say that!"

"So, spill. You're my student, not my suitor." I took another small bite, looking at him expectantly. He sighed, picking up another one to chew as he got his thoughts together.

"It, it feels like I'm falling behind..." I smirked slightly.

"If I hadn't pulled you out of that Conduit, you would have lost most of a year. You are still far, far ahead of where you would have been. What prompts this? The fact Gabby and Alee made Sage?"

"And they're ahead of me in Wizardry, too!" he groused, and then shook a shrimp at me.

"And, and that doesn't hold a candle to you! What did you do?! I can FEEL it, just being near you. It's like your power is creeping up all the time, constantly! It's very distracting when I'm next to you, and all my Stars start humming along together..." I smirked and took another bite.

"It's a consequence of the way I have to grow. You have so many Stars, you have just tremendous amounts of growth sideways." I spread my arms wide to indicate him, brought them in close to indicate myself.

"The only way I have to grow is up, so all my efforts are in that direction.

"Seriously, Mok Fan, if all you decided to grow was your, oh, Lightning Magic, how far along do you think you would be?" He started to say something, stopped himself. Lifted a finger, shut up again.

"Huh," he finally managed to get out, before taking another bite.

"Like... wow? I hadn't considered that in a long time."

"You've got eight Elements. Just count up the number of Star advances you've made. I'm pretty sure you would've made Great Archmage a looong time ago, and I could've had you up there on that Pyramid promoting to Sage well before the two of them.

"Also realize they've got Mana Renewal items just like you, so you've no advantage over them in gathering Mana. You're way ahead of them, you're just forced to go lateral because that is where your greatest strength is."

"Still feels like I'm being left behind," he groused, picking up another one. This one he stuck in and began to savor rather unduly long.

"You have the longest road to power of any of us, but it's also the broadest and the strongest. It's just the little inconveniences of the low end become a whole lot bigger at the top end, when you're looking at two hundred thousand Stars you've got to fill when you become a Sage." He groaned into some stickfuls of noodles that he scooped up.

"It's like I'm going full bore, and just falling further and further behind!"

"As opposed to being further and further ahead, like you are used to? Poor baby!" I sat back, crossed my arms, and just smirked at him again. He glowered and shook his chopsticks at me, but didn't say anything around the savory noodles. When his mouth wasn't crammed, he spluttered out, "And you! How are you increasing your power every time I see you?!" He peered at me hard, managing not to leer with the experience of the brainpower leaning on him.

"You... you're still going up right now! It's not fast, but I can feel it!"

"You know I can do multiple things at once, right?" I prodded him, and he flushed a little and nodded.

"Well, my sole Archmage Talent is called Mystical. The primary benefit of it is that I can engage in Waking Meditation without penalty. Effectively, I'm always Meditating, so I'm always drawing in Mana as if I am, and I'm always applying Mana or flexing my Control Element skills if I am." I sighed at nobody in particular, blew a disobedient lock of silky whiteness back into proper position, and said, "I know the next step past pure Sagedom. It involves accrual of a lot more Mana Reserves.

Pure Mana Reserves, without the power accumulation that our Stars signify.

"That's what you're sensing. I'm growing my Mana Reserves at the rate of about one per six seconds, or fourteen thousand a day. The end goal is Compressing all this Mana like the Great Beasts do, allowing me to multiply a fixed sum to higher and higher numbers, a task that takes up almost all the time of Rulers and Emperors, actually."

"Really." He grabbed another of his dwindling shrimp supply to chew on.

"Not a problem I'll have?" he asked doubtfully.

"You'll end up with about four million functioning Mana when topped out as a Sage, seven hundred thousand of which will be Typeless and applicable to any of your Elements. That's about the same amount of raw Mana as a Great Ruler.

"Any Low Emperor will have at least ten times that amount," I warned him.

"And... making a Mana Reserve isn't affected by how many Elements you have," he deduced.

"It is, but not in the way you think. The way you store the Mana is in fake Starry Heavens patterns around your Universes, basically building a sky full of starry constellations for your Universes. They all have to be different, so the more Sage-level spells you know in different configurations, the higher your Mana Capacity will end up being." I flicked up a crystal bead and showed it to him.

"Know what this is?" I floated it across to him. He grabbed it carefully, a flicker crossing his eyes as his Stars trembled to feel it so close.

"This... is from a High Emperor!" He looked at the contents inside it, a trembling silvery transparent liquid, like water, only... more. MUCH more.

"What is it?"

"That is called Dragon Water. It's never been seen or traded on the surface, but it's a type of currency for favor trading among Aquatic Imperial Beasts.

"That is exactly one drop of The Sea Emperor's Water Mana. Compressed four thousand times over normal Mana."

"Four thousand-!" he repeated, gaping at the little drop of unbelievably dense Mana, and finally realizing why the High Emperors had such overwhelming amounts of Mana around them.

"One Starry Heavens Sage spell invested with full High Emperor-class Mana is 9. 6 million Mana." He slumped with a groan, releasing the drop to float back to me.

"And that's what you're working on."

"And one day, so will you," I confirmed, and if anything he groaned even more. It was a good problem to have, after all!