Chương 75: Chapter 12

Shaya recovered from the fight faster than she could have hoped for, the ring's magic ensuring that only pain was translated from each blow. Even her armour survived unscathed, which she was ecstatic about. Her shift at the Soulfire Forge passed uneventfully, Shaya happy to be allowed to work with metal directly again—though Vatag had threatened her with more administrative work since she proved so good at it.

"Here," Auric said at the end of her shift, handing her a bag of clinking metal, "your pay for the week." She took the bag and hefted it. It felt like a lot more than she should have earned.

"Unless you're paying me in copper, I think you gave me too much," she said, looking up at Auric.

"I know I need the money, but I'm not going to accept handouts." He smirked.

"Vatag has the smelting house over a barrel because of your discovery, and they're throwing coin at us to keep quiet about the 'error' in their ingot moulds. What's in there is your pay for the week, plus a small bonus." Shaya opened the bag and blinked at the coins inside. Twelve electrum were in there, what she'd expect for four of her normal short shifts and her full shift that day, as well as an extra ten gold coins.

"You can't be serious, this is more money than I earn hunting monsters on average." Auric's deep laugh reverberated in her chest.

"Yes, the world is unfair that way. Your discovery has netted us in the vicinity of a thousand gold, and counting."

"Gods…" Shaya said, looking down at the coins in her hand. Her eyes narrowed as she aimed a smouldering glare at Auric.

"Wait, and I only get a ten-gold bonus?!"

"I believe I just said the world is unfair." Auric's smile was infuriating.

"Really, you just did a good job, as we'd expect of any worker… I'd probably consider offering you higher pay if you wanted to become a clerk for us full time."

"No," Shaya replied immediately, before her greed could consider it.

"I prefer smithing, there's something about it that just…resonates with me."

"Good." Auric nodded with approval.

"You're taking to it well, and I see you studying the tools of our trade hard. I better not find it interfering with your grades though."

"It won't." Shaya rolled her eyes.

"Don't worry, I've already been given that lecture… more than once." The bronze giant chuckled.

"Are you surprised that we'd care about the progress of a gifted student?"

"Gifted?" Shaya blinked.

"I feel like I'm behind almost everyone, except in Foundations, obviously."

"Hardly." He shook his head.

"Look back to your last deployment: most students immediately lost control of their emotions and lost the ability to draw their aether. A mage with no aether is no mage at all."

"I guess," she replied, "but now that they've all experienced real life-threatening combat, I'm sure they'll adjust and do much better next time."

"It's not that simple to control one's emotions," Auric continued, "that's why your current ability is impressive. Perhaps it's your fear of losing control of your anger that got you here so fast, but the others will take time to catch up."

"Alright," she said with a grin, "I guess I am pretty amazing." He rolled his eyes.

"I don't think I have to warn you of the consequences of letting such things get to your head." A picture of Azreon's arrogant sneer flashed in her mind and she winced.

"No," she agreed, "you don't."

"Perfect!" He clapped her on the shoulder, leaving it numb from his strength.

"Your dedication and passion for self-improvement are admirable, just keep it up and don't burn yourself out. Mentally speaking, not magically speaking."

"I'll do my best," she said, massaging feeling back into her shoulder for the second time that day.

"I'm just trying to catch up from sleeping so much this week."

"Your body needed it given the strain from the healing magic," he replied.

"Don't I know it," she sighed in response.

"I think I might be able to leverage my own magical healing to help speed up the gains from my workouts, but this is making me second-guess myself." Auric shrugged.

"I wouldn't know anything about that, but I'd suggest you talk to Bari before trying it." Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Don't worry, I'm not about to go experimenting on myself that recklessly," she replied.

"Would you be able to give me some advice on casting second-tier spells quicker in general though? I feel I have Bear's Strength nearly there, but I can't seem to finish the fourth secondary formula before the aether bleeds in the earlier parts of the spell." The big man stroked his rust-red beard as he weighed his options, Shaya seeing the gears turning in his mind. Auric was easier to read than many people on campus, or at least didn't try to hide his intent as often as others.

She suspected there was a basic piece of instruction he could give her, like getting better at maintaining control over larger amounts of aether, and a more advanced bit that he didn't want her to focus on before her mid-terms. Auric's snort of amusement brought Shaya out of her own mind, not realizing that he had read her expression as she was reading his.

"So," he started with a smile, "can I trust you with the advanced knowledge at this moment?" Shaya blinked, her mouth slowly hanging open as her mentor read her mind.

"Our relationship has patterns to it, Shaya." His smile grew as he continued.

"I also have the advantage of watching how you fight, how you analyse your opponents and manoeuvre them, so it shouldn't surprise you that I can predict your thoughts at least a tad better than vice versa."

"I'm not sure I'd go that far," Shaya retorted, crossing her arms and lifting her chin in defiance.

"If you knew me so well, you'd know I'd always want the advanced knowledge."

"I was just hoping you'd have learned to hone your focus," Auric replied with a tsk.

"Sometimes a mentor just needs to confirm that his pupil hasn't grown as much as they'd like to believe."

"Ouch, I guess I walked into that one."

"Yep." His grin vanished as he turned serious once again.

"I'll grant you the knowledge though, I fear you'd get distracted wondering otherwise."

"Thank you!" Her defiance melted into enthusiasm.

"So, where do we begin?" Auric gestured her to follow him to a broad anvil and took out a box of chalk, setting it on the anvil between them.

"Trace the formula for Bear's Strength for me." She picked up a piece of chalk and did so, having no difficulty transcribing it from memory now. He nodded and wiped the formula off the anvil.

"Now do it faster." She held her irritation at bay, sketching it out faster as asked. He wiped the formula off the anvil again.

"Faster." They repeated the exercise until she couldn't do it any faster, Shaya smothering a spark of rage within her.

"I can't."

"Yes, you can," he insisted.

"It's physically impossible to go…" Her sentence faltered. Her feline eyes turned back to the full box of chalk he had offered her, instead of just a single piece. Tentatively, under Auric's watchful gaze, she plucked another piece of chalk out of the box and sketched the formulae out again. It took her twice as long as it had initially, even her ambidexterity lagging behind her habit of sketching and writing with one hand at a time.

They repeated the exercise, until a few minutes later, he stopped her as her speed still hadn't shown much room for improvement.

"And that's with the advantage you have of being ambidextrous," he said, his ruby and onyx eyes meeting hers.

"Until now, you thought your spirit held only a single appendage, so do you understand why the technique I'm about to teach you is reserved for higher Circle mages? Even Oraeus or Samorn would struggle to adopt it this early."

"Teach me," Shaya responded, meeting his gaze.

"I promise I won't try to apply it beyond Bear's Strength, for now." Auric weighed what he saw in her eyes, still as a statue for several heartbeats. Then, he nodded. +++++"Alright," Rea said, "for today's lesson, I'm going to drive you into a rage and you're going to try to kill me."

"What?!" Shaya replied, aghast. They stood in one of the smaller practice rooms, a stone-walled hexagon no more than twenty feet across at any point. That left the lithe professor very little room to manoeuvre or avoid Shaya. Glowing runes on the flat ceiling illuminated the room with warm light and rain pattered away on the roof, which would have left Shaya feeling relaxed in any other circumstance.

"Don't worry," Rea replied with a smirk.

"I've faced far worse opponents than a young, hormonal mage."

"That's…" Shaya glared, "that's not the point. Shouldn't we start with something smaller? Ease into it?"

"I'm not one for safeties, Shaya," the professor admitted with a shrug.

"Nor am I a patient woman, unless it comes to my wife. I want to see with my own eyes the effect you so fear, since I couldn't find any records of it being explored scientifically. Once we can measure it, we can study it. You may very well be blowing it out of proportion and, if that's the case, maybe you won't be so afraid of yourself anymore."

"Okay," Shaya sighed, picking up her practice weapons: a sword and shield, "I'm going to try to hold back though." Rea laughed.

"Shaya, I don't think you know how to not hold back. We'll address that later though." The professor's tattoos glowed on the left side of her body, and a liquid shadow snaked into her hand to form a thin crystalline blade. Shaya felt a wave of aether as Rea's eyes glowed with each colour of the spectrum: Amethyst co-existed with Jade, Ruby with Azurite, and Sapphire with Amber.

"How is that possible?" Shaya gaped.

"You can find balance in all things, if you look for it," Rea replied.

"It's rare even outside Arcadia, of course."

"Okay, what next?" Shaya asked.

"That's easy," Rea chuckled, and gestured at Shaya to come and get her, "come at me with everything you have: spell, skill, and strength. We need to establish a baseline of your abilities." Shaya attacked her with everything she had, as instructed.