Chương 17: An Archmage's Power

Ch 17: An Archmage's Power It took me more hours than I could remember, but with my left arm covered in even more runes than I'd originally planned, I was finally about to leave my room and seek out Lathara for the free rune review. The moment I reached for the door handle and cracked the door open, however, my jaw dropped. Elitha Hearthstrong's face was there, somehow staring at me through the narrow gap, even though her eyes remained hidden beneath the black bandana wrapped around the upper half of her face.

My startled response was instinct rather than reason.

"Hell no," I said, slamming the door shut. With my heart pounding against my ribs, I regretted closing the door in her face less than a second later. It was her fault for startling me like that, no doubt, but I couldn't afford to offend her. Still, before I could reopen the door and apologize, a heavy hand settled on my shoulder from behind. I slowly turned around. Elitha Hearthstrong stood there with a smirk. One moment she was outside, and the next she was inside.

The adrenaline surging through my veins reached an all-time high as I realized just how scary her teleportation truly was. She looked exactly as I remembered: gray skin, revealing clothes that showed off an athletic body covered from head to toe in interconnected runes. Could it be that she was angry because I planned to copy her idea and tattoo runes onto my arm? I swallowed hard. She smiled, seemingly pleased by my fear, and ignored my arm completely.

"Hello, little lamb. Have you finished Magica Principia already?" Her voice was casual, showing no sign of anger, yet her presence alone was enough to make my knees want to buckle, as though something deep inside me instinctively knew we weren't even the same category of lifeform. No one besides her had ever made me feel that way. Taking a deep breath, I said, "I... haven't finished the big book yet. The Mimics and a few other things got in the way. But I swear I–""Too slow," she cut me off. Slow?

I'd skipped nearly every class to focus on runes and improving my skills. Was an archmage's standard that high? It was true that I'd probably spent far more time scribing runes for my system than actually studying the book, but surely that still counted as improving my skills, right? After all, simply reading a book without putting its lessons into practice was the best way to forget everything you'd just learned.

"So..." I said.

"You want to discuss something, I suppose?" She took a step closer, studying me with whatever sense she possessed.

"I'm here to adjust your sense of priorities, little lamb." She rested a hand on my shoulder.

"You're lacking rather badly in that regard." Without any explanation, my surroundings dissolved around me. For a moment, my eyes struggled to adjust to the blinding sunlight of this new environment. Then came the wind. The cold was so intense it felt as though Elitha had teleported me to Antarctica, or inside an enormous freezer. To my surprise, even the ground beneath my feet felt uneven, and that was the final clue I needed to realize we were no longer at the school.

I had no idea where we were, but this definitely wasn't a school anymore. As my vision adjusted and I caught glimpses of snowy mountaintops and impossibly vast valleys below, Elitha spoke.

"See it with your own eyes, little lamb," she said.

"This is what my people are building, and this is the future you have to prepare for." A sight so unbelievable unfolded before my eyes that I struggled to process it. We were on top of a mountain. And a vast operation involving what had to be thousands of Grey workers stretched across the other mountains around us. When I turned to my right, I saw an entire mountainside that had been carved away into enormous piles of rubble.

Glowing crystals were visible from the exposed rock, where thousands of workers mined and extracted them. The Greys oversaw the operation, but countless Granar and Zufi were clearly handling the heavy labor.

"What the hell?" The words escaped before I could stop them. My attention shifted toward the place where refined metals and crystals were being transported: a massive leveled construction site where an enormous structure was slowly taking shape. Following my gaze, Elitha spoke again.

"That's the future. A future that's going to be completed before the end of this year." I tried to understand what the structure was supposed to be. It was a gigantic arch built from metal and crystal. Most of the workers assigned to that section were Greys, carefully inscribing runes across every inch of each segment before what looked like cranes hoisted them into place. This was no small project.

Once completed, the structure would likely rival the Eiffel Tower in height while spanning far wider, forming an arch unlike anything I could imagine on Earth. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"I... still don't get it." Perhaps I'd understand if I could get close enough to read the runes, but from this distance, all I could conclude was that an unbelievable amount of effort was being poured into constructing an enormous structure in the middle of nowhere.

"An artificial Rift." Elitha smiled down at me.

"Courtesy of a human named Kate, who once taught us that extreme gravity spells were the secret behind artificial portals." An enormous portal created through human influence? But why was Elitha showing me this? Was she trying to convince me to share knowledge with her by demonstrating how much progress her people had already made? No. That didn't seem to be the case.

"Where will this portal lead?" There were only two possibilities. Somewhere else on Navar... or another planet. The latter was far more unsettling. Elitha rested a hand on my shoulder again.

"It will connect Navar to the Driari homeworld, offering millions of immigrants a path back home... and a path for trade and conquest." A path back home... Conquest... If returning to the Driari homeworld was possible, then... Before I could finish the thought, she placed a hand on my shoulder and the world shifted once more. This time, we stood on another leveled construction site, one that looked far newer and much farther from completion.

A group of Greys and a single Driari stood around a wooden table in the distance, apparently discussing something. Their voices traveled across the open air, but they were still too far away for me to make out their words.

"This is what I wanted to show you the most." She smirked.

"I would've come here alone to watch this regardless, but then I remembered the cute little human with misplaced priorities." Cute little human with misplaced priorities? I smiled, resisting the urge to curse the archmage. That was almost worse than being called little lamb.

"Well, there's very little to watch here," I said.

"Don't you think you might've teleported us to the wrong address?" The joke slipped out despite knowing it probably wasn't the wisest thing to say to someone like her. Elitha Hearthstrong didn't seem offended. She simply crossed her arms and continued watching the Greys and the lone Driari in the distance, the freezing climate apparently having no effect on her despite how much skin her outfit left exposed.

"If I were as weak as you, I'd brace for impact," she said. I didn't understand her warning. Still, I looked around, trying to piece together the puzzle behind her words. To my surprise, it wasn't the mountains or the landscape that posed the danger. The Driari in the distance slowly walked away from the group.

Now that I could finally get a good look at him, I noticed his long hair, pointed ears adorned with golden earrings, and a large scar that ran from his forehead to his chin, marring an otherwise handsome face. He climbed onto a small rock and raised a single hand into the air. A blue flash. Suddenly, a wave of mana washed through my entire body, nearly making me throw up the contents of my stomach. I somehow found the strength to resist it, silently cursing Elitha.

Judging by her expression, she'd barely felt anything. To my surprise, that pulse was only the beginning. An enormous magic circle suddenly took shape above the mountain. It was colossal, as vast as the mountain beneath it. Slowly, it rose higher and higher until it disappeared into the cloud layer overhead. More out of instinct than reason, I stepped behind Elitha, shifting slightly to one side so she stood directly between me and whatever was about to happen.

I knew hiding behind a woman dressed in little more than scraps of cloth wasn't exactly the sort of thing one expected from a grown man, but something deep inside told me it was the smartest decision I could make. The next moment, the clouds split apart as though a nuclear warhead had detonated among them, only without the flash or the explosion. Then a beam of light struck the mountaintop, and the ground beneath my feet trembled. I instinctively moved even closer to Elitha. A heartbeat later, the boom reached us.

Thankfully, a transparent barrier materialized around us, absorbing the shock wave before it could harm me. Elitha turned toward me with a smile.

"Archmage Lio isn't quite as hopeless a caster as I thought. Just a bit slow in the head... and terrible at detection." Oh... I stared at the mountain. Half of it was simply gone. The other half had been reduced to rubble, exposing the mountain's crystalline core, packed with brilliant crystals that radiated an overwhelming aura. If Elitha considered someone capable of doing that slow in the head... Then what counted as normal by her standards?

"Why did you bring me here?" I finally asked, as the Driari Archmage and the Greys disappeared behind the ever-expanding wall of dust left by the demolished mountain.

"To show you where my people plan to build the artificial Rift leading to Earth." With a smirk, she added, "It's good for you to know that if you take too long to share your knowledge with me, it might become completely worthless when other humans become available." I froze. My information might become worthless? That wasn't the worst part of this by any means. Fuck. No. That couldn't happen. Not now.

"You don't understand," I said.

"You need to stop them. You have no idea what kind of shitshow your people are about to unleash if you open a gate to Earth."

"We don't have mana, but–" I cut myself off. Elitha was watching me with an amused smile and an intensely attentive gaze, silently telling me how pleased she was that I was handing over my only real currency, knowledge of Earth, for free. I swallowed the rest of my warning.

"Look," I said, "as much as I miss a good cup of coffee, nothing good will come from opening a Rift to Earth. Trust me, it's not a good idea." Maybe that would change once my system became unavoidable, a world-spanning piece of infrastructure that freely translated languages and awakened skills in everyone who came into contact with it. But right now? I couldn't imagine any future that didn't end in war if the Greys marched onto Earth and started acting as though they owned the place simply because they had mana.

Archmage or not, Elitha had no idea what kind of hornet's nest her people were about to kick.

"Why do you assume I have anything to do with the artificial Rifts, little lamb?" she asked with a smirk.

"They're an investment by the Imperial Family and the Driari, who want to return home and use everything they've learned on Navar to conquer their own planet from its current rulers." Of course it had to be those elves. Could it be that they weren't just arrogant toward other species, but held deep grudges against their own as well? Fuck. Who would've thought humanity wasn't the only species that excelled at screwing itself over? Raising a hand to shield my eyes from the dust, I took a deep breath.

"So you just showed me this because you want Earth's knowledge faster?" Instead of answering, Elitha Hearthstrong rested a hand on my shoulder. In an instant, dust and destruction gave way to a quiet and familiar room. Mine. Her teleportation was almost disorienting. I wasn't sure I'd ever get used to it. Elitha ran a finger across my writing desk, then held it up for me to see. A thin layer of dried mana-ink dust coated her fingertip.

Without commenting on the mess directly, she said, "You're too focused on your little illusion project. You're missing the bigger picture. The gate to Earth will be opened in no more than two years, and your knowledge will be worth nothing." She paced around my room until she reached my copy of Magica Principia. Opening it, she flipped straight to the page where I'd stopped reading.

"Finish the book and meet me at my tower." Then, without hesitating to remind me of my debt, she added, "Don't forget that you owe me, and I expect you to repay me for getting you out of jail."

"I–" She vanished before I could say another word. Had she really shown me a potentially classified project of her people just to pressure me into finishing a book and visiting her tower? A shiver ran through my body, partly because of the freezing climate I'd just experienced, and partly because of the implications of everything she'd shown me. Before Elitha had appeared at my door, I'd been on my way to ask Lathara to check the runes on my arm. Now, I simply sat on my bed, staring at the wall. It was too much.

First came the Mimic threat, then Sahirah being moved to another building, and now I had to worry about the possibility of a magic-meets-nuclear-weapons scenario as well. I looked down at all the spell modules I'd sketched across my arm, and a thought crossed my mind. Why wasn't there a spell that could give my days more hours? Because at the rate things were happening, I'd have to become powerful and scale up my system before the Greys finished that portal to Earth.

And as much as the archmage insisted I finish the book, none of it would matter if I ended up as Mimic food before I reached the last page.

"It seems seeking out Lathara to double-check the spell on my arm is still the right move for today."